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...

Almost every citizen pays taxes and receives transfers. This is known as 'fiscal churning.' Citizens might be better-off if taxes and transfers were simultaneously lowered so that each citizen's net fiscal position did not change. Fiscal churning is a measure of political efficiency that...