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...

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...

In this paper, first, six micro (4) and macro (2) estimation approaches are briefly described; they are the National Accounts Statistics discrepancy method and two new micro survey methods, a third one using a combination of company manager surveys and their knowledge to calibrate the size of the...

We study the causal effects of household tax credits on the willingness to demand legally provided services using two survey experiments with 1.974 German homeowners. Participants choose between hypothetical offers of service providers and are randomly assigned to a policy scenario 1) without a...

Vast literature is available covering main Informal Economy (IE) causes and consequences for Latin America and Caribbean (LAC), but its size estimation has been mainly limited to worldwide models applied to the region. This paper proposes a MIMIC Base Model using a data set composed by 41...

This paper aims to identify the determinants of revenue underreporting and their temporal evolution from a business perspective in formal firms located in an emerging country with high inflation (Argentina). We propose a conceptual model and we estimate it empirically using a logistic regression...

This survey presents the various methods to estimate the size of the shadow economy, their strengths and weaknesses and the estimation results. The purpose of the survey is threefold. Firstly, it demonstrates that no ideal method to estimate the size and development of the shadow economy exists....

Over millennia, mankind has used hard cash in various forms ranging from shells to gold coins and paper. More recently, cash has become unpopular in political circles, as it effectively restricts states’ power to tax (explicitly or via negative interest rates) or to survey and potentially...