This paper deals with the Tanzi method for the estimation of underground economy. The approach is discussed and modified. Refinements on the variables and on the econometric technique are proposed. The “adjusted” Tanzi method is then used to estimate the shadow economy in Italy along...

It is widely acknowledged that underground (unrecorded) economic activities play a major role in transition economies. Evaluations of the success and failure of the transition experience should therefore be based on total economic activity [TEA], namely, the sum of recorded and unrecorded...

A taxonomy of underground economies is elaborated based on the new institutional approach to economic development. Members of formal sectors confront different sets of transformation and transaction costs than do members of informal sectors and these differences are regarded as crucial to the...

The present paper uses a survey of 1062 Czechs and 524 Slovaks to ask why people evade taxes. We maintain that the Czech and Slovak Republics are “twins” separated at birth and that divergences between these countries since their separation in 1992 can explain divergences in their rates of...

We use a dataset of 1062 individuals from the Czech Republic to forecast the evolution of tax evasion in that country. We ask each respondent how intensely (never, sometimes, often) he evaded taxes in 1995, 1999, and 2000, to calculate probabilities the average individual will move between these...

This paper re-examines the individual income tax evasion decision in the simple framework introduced by Allingham and Sandmo (1972), where the individual taxpayer decides how much of his income is invested in a safe asset (reported income) and in a risky asset (concealed income). These early...

An easy and popular method for measuring the size of the underground economy is to use macro-data such as money demand or electricity demand to infer what the legitimate economy needs, and then to attribute the remaining consumption to the underground economy. Such inferences rely on the...

This paper examines alternative specifications of a general currency ratio (GCR)model used to obtain macroeconomic estimates of the size and growth of the 'underground economy'. Tanzi's approach to estimating the underground economy is shown to be a variation of the GCR model. However both his...

This paper examines the size and implications of the Underground Economy in the US.

This paper examines why some transitions are more successful than others by focusing attention on the role of productive, protective and predatory behaviors from the perspective of the new institutional economics. Many transition economies are characterized by a fundamental inconsistency between...