To evaluate the prevalence in Eastern Europe of a little discussed illegitimate wage practice in which employers pay their formal employees both a declared wage and an undeclared ‘envelope wage’, an extensive survey involving 10,671 face-to-face interviews in eleven post-socialist societies...

The aim of this article is to evaluate competing theories that variously explain the greater prevalence of envelope wages in some countries either as: a legacy of underdevelopment (modernisation thesis); due to high taxes, state corruption and burdensome regulations and controls (neo-liberal...

This paper reveals how many formal employees in the European Union receive from their formal employer not only a declared wage but also an additional undeclared (‘envelope') wage. Reporting a 2007 survey involving 26,659 face-to-face interviews, the finding is that 1 in 18 formal employees...

To evaluate critically the recurring assumption that a job is either formal or informal, but never simultaneously both, this paper uncovers how in South-Eastern Europe many formal employees receive not only a declared wage from their formal employer but also an additional undeclared...