Governments and policymakers promote formalization through various interventions ranging from simplifying registration procedures to increasing law enforcement. Despite these efforts, not much is known about the effects of interventions aiming at formalizing informal firms. This meta-analysis examines the empirical literature on the impact of such formalization interventions. We systematically assessed the literature on the impact of formalization policies resulting in 842 estimates from 27 studies conducted by 49 researchers and published until June 2019. We analysed the meta-impact of (i) cost, (ii) benefit and (iii) enforcement policy interventions and verified whether the resulting outcomes are influenced by the type of data, econometric approach and specification, country characteristics, as well as publication bias. Overall, we find no evidence for increased formalization associated with the so far implemented interventions. There is some indication that policies increasing the benefits after formalization are associated with increased formalization rates but the evidence base is thin suggesting that further piloting and experimenting is needed to achieve large-scale formalization of the informal economy.

各国政府和政策制定者通过各种干预措施促进正规化，从简化注册程序到增加执法力度。尽管做出了这些努力，但对于旨在使非正式公司正规化的干预措施的效果知之甚少。这项荟萃分析考察了有关这种形式化干预措施影响的经验文献。我们系统地评估了有关正规化政策影响的文献，得出49位研究人员进行的27项研究得出842项估计，并发表至2019年6月。我们分析了（i）成本，（ii）收益和（iii）实施政策的影响干预措施，并验证所产生的结果是否受到数据类型，计量经济学方法和规范，国家/地区特征以及出版偏见的影响。总体，我们没有发现与迄今已实施的干预措施相关的正规化程度增加的证据。有迹象表明，正规化后增加利益的政策与正规化率的提高有关，但证据基础薄弱，表明需要进一步的试点和试验，以实现非正规经济的大规模正规化。