ABSTRACT
Informal marketplaces are open-air, periodic marketplaces. In economic anthropology they are often called peasant markets or bazaars. In these markets, unlicensed traders mix with licensed ones, black labor characterizes the transactions and a large proportion of the goods are sold cheaply because of their low quality or due to their shady origins. Some goods are smuggled, counterfeited, or sold without tax or custom duties. Two types of informal marketplaces are analyzed, the so called 'slave markets' and the COMECON markets (CM). Due to their initial Polish domination, these marketplaces used to be called 'Polish markets'. The spatial distribution was operationalized in three forms, that is, settlement size, administrative status and region. The extended regression models indicated a significant and positive association between the spreading of formal and informal markets. Hungarians from abroad and Poles are present at every fourth CM. The spatial spreading of the Hungarians from abroad resembles that of the Romanians.
