This paper studies the effects of remittances on informal employment in the migrants' countries of origin, looking both at the remittance-receiving and non-migrant households. Using data from the Social Exclusion Survey, conducted in six transition economies in 2009, I find that receiving...

Rent seeking within the vast informal segment of the developing world is a relatively underdexplored topic in the interface of labor market policies and public economics. Moreover, how rent seeking and corruption within the informal segment is affected by economic reforms targeted for the formal...

This paper examines a much overlooked link between credit markets and formalization: since access to bank credit typically requires compliance with tax and employment legislation, firms are more likely to incur such formalization costs once bank credit is more widely available at lower cost; if...

Economic growth in Russia in the first decade of this century almost doubled the country's GDP but was accompanied by substantial reallocation of labor to the unregulated sector while formal employment was on gradual decline. The paper overviews evolution of the Russian labour market during the...

In recent years there has been much policy discussion of the impact of unemployment benefits and other factors on unemployment duration in developed and transition countries. This paper presents first evidence on the determinants of unemployment duration in Ukraine. Using individual-level data...

We build a general equilibrium model in which both illegal immigration and the size of the informal sector are endogenously determined. In this framework, we show that indirect policy measures such as tax reduction and detection of informal activities can be used as substitutes for border...

"Government expenditure on formal residential care and home-help services for the elderly significantly reduces 45-59 year old women's informal care-giving affecting both the extensive and the intensive margin. Allowing for country fixed-effects and country-specific trends and correcting for...

We revisit the universality of the "caregiving daughter effect", which holds that daughters tend to provide more care to their older parents than sons. Based on rich European data, we document evidence of such an effect in countries with large gender disparities in employment rates, where having...

This paper provides a long term analysis of the determinants of the shadow economy. Using data for the United States over the years 1870–2014 we examine economic and political factors driving the underground sector. Results show that among the economic factors, greater economic prosperity...