THE BLACK ECONOMY IN TURKEY: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

The existing economic literature on the black economy and its measurable size is mainly based on industrialized western countries. This paper, however, tries to estimate the size of the black economy empirically in the case of a developing country: Turkey. According to the monetary approach that this paper has also adopted, the size of the black economy in Turkey has an ever increasing trend and reached nearly 10% of its GNP in 1997. Moreover, this paper also suggests that there is further scope for the black economy in Turkey since the tax burden is relatively low. And currently, the Turkish government is trying to increase taxes, which may lead to a further expansion in the size of the black economy in Turkey.