Shadow economies around the world: what do we know?

Friedrich Schneider () and Robert Klinglmair
Additional contact information
Robert Klinglmair: Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, http://www.econ.jku.at/

No 2004-03, Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

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: shadow economy; interaction of the shadow economy with the official one; tax burden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 H11 H2 H26 O17 O5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-lam and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (126)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2004/wp0403.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:jku:econwp:2004_03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by René Böheim ().