The informal economy : underground economy, moonlighting, subcontracting, household economy, unorganized sector, barter, ghetto economy, second economy : a research guide /

A needed addition to bibliographic guides on the informal/underground economy. Danesh laudably intends the bibliography to be comprehensive and inclusive, covering literature on the topic in multiple fields and in all areas of the world. Annotated entries can be accessed through detailed subject categories, a subject index, and an author index. As admirable as the goals of the bibliography are, however, it frequently falls short of meeting them. The annotations are of uneven quality and those for journal articles are often longer than those for books. The author index does not include second authors and, in some cases (e.g., Louis Ferman), entirely fails to index primary authors. Despite Danesh's claim that the bibliography is 95% exhaustive, there are numerous omissions. For example, more than 40% of the entries in the bibliographic essay "The Underground Economy" by S.M. Soiffer and this reviewer (CH, Jul'87) are not to be found in Danesh's work. The international coverage is especially spotty, and government documents (important literature on this topic!) and shorter bibliographies were omitted altogether. Finally, the author appears to have a significant bias in touting the informal economy's "ever-expanding capacity to resolve today's problems" (p.1). In spite of these shortcomings, this work makes an important contribution and easily surpasses the only other recent comparable bibliography, Nancy K. Humphreys's The Underground Economy (CH, Jun'85). College, university, and business libraries.-G. M. Herrmann, SUNY College at Cortland