This book brings together two leading researchers in the field to provide a comprehensive overview of the shadow economy from a global perspective. Reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of measuring the informal sector, the authors evaluate its size and key determinants across the world. Williams and Schneider clearly establish the persistence and prevalence of the shadow economy, analysing the narrowness of existing policy approaches and explaining how these fail to address the key factors for its existence and may even exacerbate the problem. Proposing an alternative way forward, the authors argue that little headway will ever be made in reducing the shadow economy until there are changes not only to the character of formal institutions but also informal institutions (the values, beliefs and norms of citizens) through the introduction of macro-level structural changes. This timely, cutting-edge review of the global shadow economy and how it can be measured and tackled is an invaluable resource for postgraduate students, researchers and policy-makers, particularly those with a interest in tax evasion and informal labour.

This book presents new data to give an overview of shadow economies from OECD countries and propose solutions to prevent illicit work.

A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.

During much of the twentieth century, informal employment and entrepreneurship was commonly depicted as a residue from a previous era. Its continuing presence was seen to be a sign of "backwardness" whilst the formal economy represented "progress". In recent decades, however, numerous studies have revealed not only that informal employment is extensive and persistent but also that it is growing relative to formal employment in many populations. Whilst in the developing world, the informal economy is often found to be the mainstream economy, nevertheless, in the developed world too, informality is currently still estimated to account for notable per cent of GDP. The Informal Economy: Exploring Drivers and Practices intends to engage with these issues, providing a much-need ‘contextualised’ approach to explain the persistence and growth of forms of informal economic practices and entrepreneurial activities in the twenty-first century. Using a diverse range of empirical case studies from Europe, Africa, North Africa and Asia, this book unpacks the different varieties of forms of informal work and entrepreneurship and provides a critical analysis of existing theorisations used to explain such phenomena. This book’s aim is to examine the nature and persistence of informal work and entrepreneurship, across a variety of empirical settings, from within the developed world, the developing world and within transformation economies within post-socialist spaces. Given its worldwide, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach and recent interest in the informal economies by a number of disciplines and organisations, this book will be of vital reading to those operating in the fields of: Economics, political economy and management, Human and economic geography and Economic anthropology and sociology as well as development studies

This paper examines the drivers, and reestimates the size of shadow economies in Europe, with a focus on the emerging economies, and recommends policies to increase formality. The size of shadow economies declined across Europe in recent years but remains significant, especially in Eastern Europe. In the emerging European economies, the key determinants of shadow economy size are regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and human capital. The paper argues that a comprehensive package of reforms, focused on country-specific drivers, is needed to successfully combat the shadow economy. The menu of policies most relevant for Europe’s emerging economies include: reducing regulatory and administrative burdens, promoting transparency and improving government effectiveness, as well as improving tax compliance, automating procedures, and promoting electronic payments.

The main objective of this book is to develop a strategy and policy measures to enhance the formalization of the shadow economy in order to improve the competitiveness of the economy and contribute to economic growth; it explores these issues with special reference to Serbia. The size and development of the shadow economy in Serbia and other Central and Eastern European countries are estimated using two different methods (the MIMIC method and household-tax-compliance method). Micro-estimates are based on a special survey of business entities in Serbia, which for the first time allows us to explore the shadow economy from the perspective of enterprises and entrepreneurs. The authors identify the types of shadow economy at work in business entities, the determinants of shadow economy participation, and the impact of competition from the informal sector on businesses. Readers will learn both about the potential fiscal effects of reducing the shadow economy to the levels observed in more developed countries and the effects that formalization of the shadow economy can have on economic growth.

This original and insightful handbook presents the latest research on the size and development of the shadow economy (also known as the black or underground economy), an integral component of the most developing and many developed countries' economies.

The Global Informal Workforce is a fresh look at the informal economy around the world and its impact on the macroeconomy. The book covers interactions between the informal economy, labor and product markets, gender equality, fiscal institutions and outcomes, social protection, and financial inclusion. Informality is a widespread and persistent phenomenon that affects how fast economies can grow, develop, and provide decent economic opportunities for their populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to uncover the vulnerabilities of the informal workforce.

Bringing together prominent scholars in the field, this Handbook provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the complex interrelationship between migration and welfare. Chapters further examine the effects of emigration on sending societies exploring issues such as the impact of remittances, diasporas, and skill deterioration as a result of human capital flight on capacity building and on economic and political development more generally.

The Informal Economy: Measures, Causes, and Consequences provides a comprehensive account of the economics of informality through the lenses of various economic perspectives. Although informal economic activity is widespread all around the world, many issues around its nature and consequences remain largely under-explored or unresolved. Most importantly, the evidence presented in the existing literature on informality has failed to generate a consensus on the measurements, causes, and effects of the informal sector among researchers. Most, if not all, of the empirical results are inconclusive or dependent on the nature of the dataset used in the analysis. This book aims to address that gap by exploring different definitions and measures of the informal economy, including different perspectives, then subjecting these measures to a battery of empirical tests to examine the determinants and effects of informality. Through this analysis and an extensive review of the literature, the book explores many of the economic, political, and social factors of the informal economy including the relationship between informality and the tax burden, tax enforcement, and institutional quality. This key text makes for compulsive reading to scholars and students interested in the informal or shadow economy.