Shadow Economies Around the World: What Do We Know?

Social Science Research Network, 2004

288 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using various statistical procedures, estimates about the size of the shadow economy in 110 developing, transition and OECD countries are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (in percent of official GDP) over 1999-2000 in developing countries is 41%, in transition countries 38% and in OECD countries 18.0%. An increasing burden of taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulatory activities are the driving forces for the growth and size of the shadow economy. If the shadow economy increases by one percent the annual growth rate of the "official" GDP of a developing country (of a industrialized and/or transition country) decreases by 0.6% (increases by 0.8 and 1.0 respectively).

Subfields: Accounting, Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c93ab1672cab7ed44963304d2ce1655535f4a665

Citations in the corpus

• Attitudes Towards Paying Taxes in Austria: An Empirical Analysis (2005, unknown): “Schneider and Klinglmair (2004, p. 13) report that the size of shadow economy measured in % of GDP increased from 6.9 (average 1989/1990) to 9.8 (average 1999/2000 ) percent.”
• Shadow economy and unemployment rate in USA: is there a structural relationship? An empirical analysis (2008, unknown): “The social security contributions as ratio of official GDP, the UR and the rate of self-employment as a percentage of the labour force are the main determinants of SE in USA.”
• Taxing the Informal Economy: The Current State of Knowledge and Agendas for Future Research (2014, unknown): “With respect to revenue, the informal sector forms a large and, in many countries, growing share of GDP, and thus represents a potentially significant source of tax revenue for cash-strapped governments (Schneider, Buehn, & Montenegro, 2010; Schneider & Klinglmair, 2004).”
• The Theory of Tax Evasion: A Retrospective View (2005, unknown): “…should be equal to government expenditure on goods and services, which could 18 For a recent survey and further references, see Schneider and Klinglmair (2004). also be subject to optimization within the same model.19 To extend the usual analysis of optimal taxation to take account of tax…”
• Russian Attitudes Toward Paying Taxes - Before, During and After the Transition (2006, unknown): “show the correlation between tax morale in a country and the size of the country's shadow economy, using a sample of countries for which estimates of the informal sector as a percent of official GDP are available from Schneider and Klinglmair (2004)”
• Tax compliance of small business owners (2012, unknown): “The “shadow economy” as a proxy for tax evasion varies dramatically across countries; ranging from around 10 per cent of GNP in Switzerland, Austria, the US and Japan, to slightly below 30 per cent in Italy and Greece, to 46 per cent in the Russian Federation, and to 67 per cent in Bolivia in the ye”