Evaluating cross-national variations in envelope wage payments in East-Central Europe

Colin Williams

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2015, vol. 36, issue 2, 283-303

Abstract: This article seeks to explain the cross-national variations in the tendency of employers to under-declare 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 across 10 East-Central European countries using data from a 2007 Eurobarometer survey, envelope wage payments are found to be less common, smaller and more likely to be for extra work in wealthier, less corrupt and more equal nations with higher levels of taxation, social protection and effective redistribution via social transfers. The theoretical and policy implications are then discussed.

Keywords: Central and Eastern Europe; envelope wages; informal economy; informal employment; tax compliance; tax evasion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X13505120 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:36:y:2015:i:2:p:283-303

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X13505120

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().