This paper presents new evidence on the dynamics of dollarization and euroization for twenty-five transition countries. Estimates of the amount of foreign currency in circulation (FCC) in transition countries are used to develop a new comprehensive dollarization index (CDI) and separate indices...

This paper compiles alternative estimates of underground economies in twenty five transition countries during the transition decade and finds a disturbing lack of convergence between them, calling into question the reliability of GDP figures (which in varying degrees now include non-transparent...

This paper compiles alternative estimates of underground economies in twenty five transition countries during the transition decade and finds a disturbing lack of convergence between them, calling into question the reliability of GDP figures (which in varying degrees now include non-transparent...

This paper evaluates critically the meta-narrative that capitalism is becoming more powerful, expansive, hegemonic and totalising as it stretches its tentacles ever wider across the globe and penetrates deeper into each and every corner of daily life. Reviewing the ways in which an emerging...

Over the past decade or so, there has been widespread recognition that a large and growing proportion of the global workforce is employed in informal sector enterprises. To explain this, neo-liberals contend that enterprises operate in the informal sector due to high taxes, public sector...

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...

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...

This paper shows why some countries are trapped in an equilibrium with high unofficial economic activity and corruption while other countries are not. The potential for different outcomes follows directly from the complementary nature of unofficial economy and corruption activity

Tax bribes are a very real part of the tax culture in transition countries. Economic transition, fiscal reforms, and efforts to strengthen tax administration are changing the tax cultures of transition countries, however. This paper examines firm-level survey data on the frequency of firms being...