Inter-household transfers in Russia, Ukraine, and Latvia to provide an important supplement to individual incomes. These transfers are as high as in many developing countries. Transfers are from richer to poorer, from older to younger, and to femaleheaded households. We find no evidence that...

Across 69 countries, higher tax rates are associated with less unofficial activity as a percent of GDP but corruption is associated with more unofficial activity. Entrepreneurs go underground not to avoid official taxes but to reduce the burden of bureaucracy and corruption. Dodging the...

The authors found that, in post-communist economies, the unofficial economy's share of GDP is determined by the extent of control rights held by bureaucrats and politicians. Exploring in detail the role of taxation and bribery, and using data from an expanded data set of 49 Latin American, OECD,...

Our survey of private manufacturing firms finds the size of hidden ‘unofficial’ activity to be much larger in Russia and Ukraine than in Poland, Slovakia and Romania. A comparison of cross-country averages shows that managers in Russia and Ukraine face higher effective tax rates, worse...