Limited availability of workfare programs and unemployment insurance and a large informal sector are features of the Argentine labor market at the outset of the 2001 economic crisis. This paper tests the hypothesis whether informal work is an alternative to workfare participation before a...

This paper analyses how governance or institutional quality and tax morale affect the shadow economy, using an international country panel and also within country data. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the level and changes of shadow...

This paper analyses how tax morale and countries' institutional quality affect the shadow economy, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a variety of potential factors. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the size and development of...

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 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...

This paper is a first attempt to study the size and development of the shadow economies of 157 countries over 1999 to 2013. Using a MIMIC model, we find that higher tax and regulatory burden, unemployment and self-employment rates are drivers of the shadow economy, meaning that an increase of...

We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of the shadow economy on entrepreneurial entry, utilising 1998-2005 individual-level Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data merged with macro level variables. A simple correlation coefficient suggests a positive linear link between the size of...

A number of recent studies for Latin America show that as the size of the informal economy grows, corruption is less harmful to inequality. We investigate if this relationship is equally compelling for developing countries in Asia where corruption, inequality and shadow economies are...

The relationship between corruption and the shadow economy is not clear. Theoretically, they either substitute or complement each other - exhibiting either a negative or positive relationship. This paper - using a structural equation model with two latent variables - extracts information on...