Informal entrepreneurship represents a common mode of business formation globally and entails starting and operating a business without registering it with legal authorities. Despite the size of the informal sector in many countries, the motivations for entrepreneurs to operate nonregistered ventures are not well understood. Although formal institutions play an important role, we argue that the decision to operate a nonregistered new venture is influenced by a pervasive informal institution around the world: the practice of extortion payments to organized crime. Because criminal organizations foster the development of norms and beliefs cementing extortion payments as an institution, we posit that entrepreneurs will use nonregistration as a buffer to avoid extortion costs preemptively. We further explicate that this choice is contingent upon founders’ access to resources and ventures’ product-market strategy, which shape visibility to organized crime and the ability to resist extortion and, thus, alter the need for nonregistration as a buffer against institutionalized extortion. Our analysis of over 8,000 new ventures operating in 39 economies largely supports these arguments. This study identifies a novel causal mechanism in the nomological network of informal entrepreneurship, namely, the prevalence of organized crime, and informs a multilevel theory of how entrepreneurs choose the type of organizational form for their ventures. Finally, it illuminates the importance of shadow institutions—illegal and not widely accepted practices—which may operate as unique but often overlooked types of institutions that shape entrepreneurial and organizational decisions.

非正式企业家精神是全球范围内一种常见的企业组建模式，需要在未向法律授权机构注册的情况下启动和运营企业。尽管许多国家的非正规部门规模庞大，但对于企业家经营非注册企业的动机仍知之甚少。尽管正式机构起着重要作用，但我们认为，经营未注册新企业的决定受到世界各地普遍存在的非正式机构的影响：为有组织犯罪勒索款项的做法。由于犯罪组织促进规范和信念的发展，从而巩固了作为一种机构的勒索款项，因此我们认为企业家将使用非注册作为缓冲，从而避免了勒索成本。我们进一步说明，这种选择取决于创始人获得资源的途径和企业的产品市场战略，这决定了有组织犯罪的可见性和抵制敲诈的能力，从而改变了对非注册的需求，以此作为制度化敲诈的缓冲。我们对在39个经济体中运营的8,000多家新企业的分析在很大程度上支持了这些观点。这项研究确定了非正式企业家行为学网络中的一种新颖的因果机制，即有组织犯罪的流行，并为企业家如何选择企业的组织形式类型提供了多层次理论。最后，