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...

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 examines the measurement, size and implications of the Underground Economy in the US.

This paper examines the size and implications of the Underground Economy in the US.

This paper examines the contribution of Hernando De Soto’s “The Other Path” in the context of the literature on “underground economies”. Various types of “underground economies” are described and are shown to arise from different causes and to have different consequences. The...

The “underground economy” literature has generated a plethora of vague terms (shadow, hidden, subterranean) that have served to confuse rather than clarify the substantive issues raised by the finding that significant segments of economic activity may be imperfectly accounted for in the...

A taxonomy of underground economies is elaborated based on the new institutional approach to economic development. Members of formal sectors confront different sets of transformation and transaction costs than do members of informal sectors and these differences are regarded as crucial to the...

Abstract 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...