To synthesize the literature on determinants of the shadow economy, this paper uses three cross-national shadow economy measures and employs numerous determinants over hundreds of model combinations to identify robust determinants of the shadow economy and address modeling uncertainty. We find...

A large number of empirical studies pointed to the ongoing expansion of the shadow economy in many countries around the globe. A robust finding in these studies is the positive association between unemployment rates and the size of the unofficial sector. However, with consistent estimates of the...