The Informal Economy as a Site of Liquidity: Pakistan's Land Market

Abstract

Based on extensive fieldwork, this article examines new informality in Pakistan's land market by which vacant plots of land are transacted informally between market actors in rapidly reversed short‐term holdings. The analysis pivots around the changing economic environment in Pakistan with the shift from heavy regulation of money and controlled pricing, to the liberalization of money and markets. The author explores how liquidity is taken up as a microeconomic strategy to protect against new financial risk in this environment, and how this is played out as a preference for informal transactions. These practices inform a case study that contributes to the established literature on the links between globalization and the informal economy by articulating a driver of growing informal transactions that is novel to the literature.

Urban Informality and the Built Environment

“…Specifically, he explains the purpose of middle-class associations in regulating informal street trade and waste collection in Delhi. Another example is Antonia Settle (2018) as she examines Pakistan's land market, where informal transactions are not a reflection of a lack of faith in state institutions or an attempt to evade regulatory authorities but a response to the uncertainties of global financial flows. Settle highlights that the motivating factor is a desire for liquidity, which parallels the imperative behind liquid financial trading in the west.…”