Purpose

To transcend the view of employment as either formal or informal, this paper evaluates the prevalence of quasi-formal employment where formal employers pay formal employees an unreported (“envelope”) wage in addition to their formal reported salary. To explain the individual-level variations in quasi-formal employment, the “marginalisation” thesis is evaluated that this practice is more prevalent among vulnerable groups and to explain the country-level variations, and a neo-institutionalist theory is evaluated that it is more prevalent where formal institutional failures lead to an asymmetry between the formal laws and regulations and the unwritten socially shared rules of informal institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

To evaluate the individual- and country-level variations in the prevalence of quasi-formal employment, a multi-level logistic regression is provided of data from special 2019 Eurobarometer survey 92.1 involving 11,793 interviews with employees across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom).

Findings

Of the 3.5% of employees (1 in 28) who receive under-reported salaries, the marginalisation thesis is supported that it is largely vulnerable population groups. So too is the neo-institutionalist explanation that quasi-formal employment is more common in countries where the non-alignment of formal and informal institutions is greater, with the formal institutional failings producing this identified as lower levels of economic development, less modernised state bureaucracies and lower levels of taxation and social protection.

Practical implications

The policy implication is that tackling quasi-formal employment requires not only enforcement authorities to improve the risk of detection of this illegal wage practice but also governments to change wider macro-level structural conditions. These are outlined.

Originality/value

Contemporary new evidence is provided of the prevalence of quasi-formal employment along with how this illegal wage practice can be explained and tackled.

中文翻译：

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超越正规/非正规就业二元论：评估个人和国家层面准正规就业共性的差异

目的

为了超越正式或非正式就业的观点，本文评估了准正式就业的普遍性，在准正式就业中，除了正式报告的工资外，正式雇主还向正式雇员支付未报告的（“信封”）工资。为了解释准正规就业在个人层面的差异，“边缘化”论点被评估为这种做法在弱势群体中更为普遍，并解释了国家层面的差异，并且新制度主义理论被评估为更在正式制度失败导致正式法律法规与非正式制度不成文的社会共享规则之间不对称的情况下很普遍。

设计/方法/方法

为了评估准正规就业流行率在个人和国家层面的差异，我们对 2019 年欧洲晴雨表特别调查 92.1 的数据进行了多级逻辑回归，该调查涉及 28 个欧洲国家（欧洲联盟的 27 个成员国）的 11,793 次员工访谈。欧盟和英国）。

发现

在 3.5% 的员工（每 28 人中有 1 人）领取低报工资的情况下，边缘化论点得到支持，即主要是弱势群体。新制度主义的解释也是如此，即在正式和非正式制度不一致的国家，准正式就业更为普遍，正式制度的失败导致了这种情况的产生，即经济发展水平较低，国家官僚机构现代化程度较低以及较低的税收和社会保护水平。

实际影响

政策含义是，解决准正规就业不仅需要执法部门提高发现这种非法工资行为的风险，还需要政府改变更广泛的宏观结构条件。概述了这些。

原创性/价值

当代的新证据表明准正规就业的盛行以及如何解释和解决这种非法工资做法。