Shadow Economies around the World: What Do We Know?

Friedrich Schneider () and Robert Klinglmair ()
Additional contact information
Robert Klinglmair: University of Linz

No 1043, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: 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).

Keywords: interaction of the shadow economy with the official one; shadow economy; tax burden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 H11 H2 H26 O17 O5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2004-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (144)

Published - published in: European Journal of Political Economy, 2005, 21 (3), 598-642

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp1043.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Shadow Economies around the World: What Do We Know? (2004)
Working Paper: Shadow Economies Around the World: What Do We Know? (2004)
Working Paper: Shadow economies around the world: what do we know? (2004)
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:iza:izadps:dp1043

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().