Which incentives have the strongest impact on the size of the shadow economy? Is it about government's pressure against entrepreneurs operating in this sector, or is it about the benefits of legality? The goal of this paper is to explicitly contrast the role of sticks (court repressiveness) and...

The shadow (underground) economy plays a major role in many countries. People evade taxes and regulations by working in the shadow economy or by employing people illegally. On the one hand, this unregulated economic activity can result in reduced tax revenue and public goods and services, lower...

In this paper, the main focus lies on the informal economy and on work in the shadow. The most influential factors on the informal economy are tax policies and state regulation. The size of the informal economy was decreasing over the period 1999 to 2007, from 34.0% to 31.2% for 161 countries...