ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly reviews how, despite the slow recognition that informally entrepreneurship can have positive impacts, the conventional negative depiction of this endeavour as unproductive has not so far been put under the spotlight. It highlights the shortcomings of the evidence to support the view of informal entrepreneurship as unproductive and deleterious to future firm performance, and resulting from this, a series of propositions are then constructed to compare the firm performance of formal firms by whether they started up registered or unregistered and the length of time they remained unregistered. The chapter introduces the survey data and methods used to evaluate these propositions and presents an evaluation of the relationship between informal entrepreneurship and firm performance. It then draws conclusions regarding the impacts of starting up unregistered and the length of time spent unregistered on future firm performance.
