In transition economies, a significant number of companies reduce their tax and social contributions by paying their staff an official salary, described in a registered formal employment agreement, and an extra, undeclared "envelope wage," via a verbal unwritten agreement. The consequences...

The discussion about precarious labor and its various manifestations has grown rapidly. However, one of the difficulties, and one of the problems, in any attempt to follow the discussion about precarious labor is the lack of homogeneity about the meaning and definition of this category. This...

Collaborative evasion of taxes and social security fees is prevalent in household services, when a household hires a service provider and no third party is involved. However, evidence on the determinants of collaborative tax evasion in general and the household context in particular is lacking....

Little is known about the size and determinants of undeclared work. While approaches to measure the shadow economy have been extensively discussed, conventional surveys dominate research on undeclared work. We review and extend this literature by first referring to the most recent survey data on...

This paper documents the link between finance and informal competition. Using longitudinal firm-level data, we show that formal firms that are more exposed to the competition of informal firms are less likely to apply for a bank loan. This result is not due to sample selection, omitted variable...

Little is known about the size and determinants of undeclared work. While approaches to measure the shadow economy have been extensively discussed, conventional surveys dominate research on undeclared work. We review and extend this literature by first referring to the most recent survey data on...

This paper uses a generalized estimating equations approach to investigate the willingness of street hawkers in Accra to exit their trade when offered viable alternatives. We observe a direct relationship between willingness to exit hawking and age. Willingness to exit hawking declines over...

The paper applies two commonly used methods in the literature to estimate the shadow economy in Malta, the Currency Demand Approach and the Multiple Indicator Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model. Given the unobservable nature of the shadow economy, estimates are surrounded by a considerable degree of...

Sales from businesses to consumers provide fertile ground for collaborative tax evasion. However, little is known about the phenomenon. We conduct a natural field experiment with 2,900 businesses in which we take the role of consumers and vary if we request an invoice for the delivery of a...

Based on the methodology proposed by Frey and Osborne (2017), we use their estimates for the probability of automation of occupations together with household survey data on the occupational distribution of employment to provide a risk assessment for the threat that automation may pose to the...