On 3 May 2017, the European Platform Tackling Undeclared Work organised a seminar in Brussels on Tools and approaches to deal with undeclared work in the construction sector. The seminar brought together Platform members and observers from 21 EU Member States (MS) and Norway (EEA) representing...

To evaluate the “marginalization thesis” which posits that marginalized populations are more likely to engage in the undeclared economy, a 2013 Eurobarometer survey of six South-East European countries is analysed. Finding that some marginalized populations (e.g., those having difficulties...

Informal employment has been variously explained as resulting from: economic under-development and a lack of modernisation (modernisation theory); high taxes and state interference in the free market (neo-liberal theory) or inadequate levels of state intervention to protect citizens (political...

This article evaluates critically the competing explanations for informal sector entrepreneurship that read such endeavours to result from either ‘exclusion' from state benefits and the circuits of the modern economy or the voluntary ‘exit' of workers from formal institutions. Reporting...

Drawing inspiration from institutional theory, a small sub-stream of literature has proposed that participation in the informal economy arises from the lack of alignment of a society's formal institutions (i.e. its codified laws and regulations) with its informal institutions (i.e. the norms,...

This article seeks to explain the cross-national variations in the tendency of employers to underdeclared salaries by paying formal employees an undeclared (‘envelope') wage in addition to their official declared salary. Analysing the prevalence, size and nature of envelope wage payments...

This paper evaluates how the undeclared economy is being tackled in FYR Macedonia. Reporting the findings on the extent and nature of the undeclared economy in this country, FYR Macedonia is shown to have the largest undeclared economy of all European countries and such work is prevalent across...

The aim of this paper is to map the spatial variations in the size of the shadow economy within Brussels. Reporting data provided by the National Bank of Belgium on the deposit of high denomination banknotes across bank branches in the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, the...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate contrasting policy approaches towards undeclared work. To do so, evidence is reported from 1,000 face-to-face interviews conducted in Croatia during 2013. Logistic regression analysis reveals no association between participation in undeclared work and the...

This paper evaluates critically whether the cross-national variations in the size of the informal economy are the result of: under-development (a modernisation perspective); high taxes, corruption and state interference (neo-liberal perspective), or inadequate state intervention to protect...