Institutions, gendered informality, and intrahousehold distribution: A dual-economy model

We study how enforcement institutions shape formalization and the intrahousehold distribution of resources in a developing economy. The model combines an enforcement wedge inside informal technology, gendered formal-attachment margins, and a collective household with a state-dependent female Pareto weight. In the benchmark wage-responsive specification, enforcement raises formalization by compressing informal wages and reallocating work toward formal jobs. Yet aggregate formalization and women's intrahousehold gains need not move together. When women are more exposed to informality and men convert the induced formal-to-informal wage ratio into formal attachment more strongly in level terms, enforcement can lower women's relative earnings, relative formal status, the female Pareto weight, and the consumption ratio during adjustment. An exact effective-access transition and local calculations for the effective-access and reduced-form labor-disutility margins show that this adverse incidence can be offset within the model while preserving formalization gains. Descriptive quarterly evidence for Türkiye documents gendered dynamics in non-agricultural social-security non-registration around salient macroeconomic and institutional episodes. The empirical evidence motivates the labor-market exposure and access channels but does not observe household bargaining or individual consumption.