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This paper aims analyzing the emergence of the so-called platform capitalism through informal economy studies. Starting from research developed in the '80s and '90s in the United Kingdom about poor people's survival strategies, the author shows how contemporary platform capitalism reproduces economic forms that used to be considered informal. The article taking into consideration this temporal sequence enables to consider platform economy as a response to the typical paradoxes of the domain of informality, differently from analyses that consider platform capitalism as a mere transference of private activities into the digital sphere in order to reduce transaction costs. The article concludes on the concept of "conversion" through which Peruvian economist de Soto aims at transforming informal economies of the poor into the motor of the capitalist development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on several topics including institutional change and capitalism in China, economic development policies in Italy, and the social and economic environment in Great Britain.