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Purpose: The present research aims at identifying the latent factors that are driving the rise of the shadow economy in Palestine, assesses its magnitude from 1998 to 2021 and investigates the influence that its size has on the financial sustainability of Palestine's public budget. Design/methodology/approach: The researchers employed the multi-indicator multi-causes (MIMIC) model to estimate the size of the shadow economy and investigate its effect on the financial sustainability of the public budget. Economic factors such as direct taxes, indirect taxes, government welfare, government spending and unemployment were considered causal variables, while indicators of financial sustainability included budget deficit, public debt and gross domestic product (GDP). The shadow economy served as an intermediary variable. Findings: Based on the findings, the researchers recommend regulating and formalizing legitimate activities within the shadow economy. Additionally, they suggest promoting investment projects to reduce unemployment rates, lowering taxes on essential goods and consumer items and providing support to local producers in Palestine. These measures aim at addressing the challenges posed by the shadow economy and fostering economic stability. Originality/value: The study reveals that the average size of the shadow economy in Palestine between 1998 and 2021 was 43.80%, fluctuating within the range of 39.92%–46.30%. It further establishes that an increase in direct and indirect taxes as well as unemployment contributes to the expansion of the shadow economy. Conversely, government welfare and spending exert a diminishing effect. Moreover, the study finds that the rise of the shadow economy correlates with an increase in public debt, budget deficit and GDP, indicating a negative impact on the financial sustainability of the public budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Following the COVID-19 outbreak, there are concerns whether economies are becoming farther from equality and competency. While this matters to every economy, it is more crucial for developing ones who already suffer from income inequalities and lack of competency. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses an administrative data from the Iran's Social Security Organization (ISSO) that provides insurance to workers entitled to the Labor Law of Iran. The data contain more than 7,000,000 workers. The authors assess heterogeneous impact of the first wave of the pandemic by firms' size and average payment. Findings: The authors' estimation results indicate that, following the initiation of the pandemic, the workers whose corresponding firms are smaller, overall, are more prone to the pandemic and are more likely to submit a request for unemployment benefits. However, the relation is neither homogeneous across sectors nor linear among micro-sized firms. Few sectors indicate a positive relationship between size and likelihood of request submission, including cultural activity, shoemaking and clothing sectors. Besides the size, the authors investigate whether pay grades could explain the probability of becoming unemployed after the pandemic. Results show that workers whose corresponding firms pay less are more likely to submit a request. This is robust within different sectors. Research limitations/implications: The ISSO dataset is not a panel, so the authors cannot employ methods of causal inferences. The authors' results should be seen as correlation; however, due to exogeneity and sharpness of the pandemic the result infers to some degree of causality. The data does not cover the informal sector, so the estimates are at lower boundary. Originality/value: Administrative data on unemployment benefits during COVID-19 show that the pandemic interferes with competition by forcing low-paid workers and small firms to exit the market. This is an alarm for the competition in every economy, specially developing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Do financial services needs depend on the firm size? To highlight the impact of different categories of financial services on firm performance, we establish a correspondence between financial services and firms' performance classified according to their size, controlling with the determinants of firm performance and the obstacles that hinder the development of each category of firm. Design/methodology/approach: We have mobilized microeconomic data on 78,629 firms stratified by size and covering 135 countries, extracted from the Enterprise Surveys database. A two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression analysis with instrumental variable modeling is used. Findings: Our empirical results show that a firm's financing behavior differs according to its size. For micro and small firms, the availability of internal financing has a positive impact on their performance. For medium-size firms, the use of debt stimulates firm performance. For large firms, the positive effect of debt diminishes as the level of debt increases, which leads this category of firms to increase their capital. We complemented our study by exploring the issue of whether barriers to firm performance differ by size. Our results bring a support to the idea that medium-size firms suffer more than micro, small, and large firms. The size of this category of firms does not allow them to operate in the informal sector as micro and small firms do, and does not allow them to influence political authorities to operate in their favor as large firms do. Originality/value: Previous studies have focused on investigating the effects of access to finance and/or financing constraints on firm's performance, neglecting the issue of identifying which financial services have the most impact on firm performance depending on firms' size. This study fills the gap in the literature in two main ways. First, we identify the financial services that have the most impact on firm performance using firm-level data covering 78,629 firms by size (micro, small, medium, and large). Second, we investigate the different barriers to firm performance by size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between macroeconomic fundamentals, intuitional quality and shadow economy. Design/methodology/approach: By utilizing data setspanning from 2004 to 2015 of 141 countries, the study has employed advanced panel technique, i.e. Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method. In order to check consistency of the results, the study also used fixed effect and random effect for robustness. Findings: The study finds that for the full sample, institutional quality has negative effect on shadow economy while macroeconomic fundaments effect shadow economy differently. After splitting the sample into Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and non-OIC countries subsamples, it observes same influence of macroeconomic fundaments and institutional quality on shadow economy, but the effect of macroeconomic fundaments and institutional quality on shadow economy is less observed for OIC countries. The results are found consistence by using different estimation methods. Originality/value: The current literature has focused on estimating the size of shadow economy and literature linking the macroeconomic fundaments, institutional quality and shadow economy is scarce. Additionally, this study provides the evidence for cross comparison between OIC economies and non-OIC economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Despite a widespread assertion that wages are lower in the informal than formal economy, there have been few empirical evaluations of whether this is the case and even fewer studies of the gender variations in wage rates in the formal and informal economies. Consequently, whether there are wage benefits to formal employment for men and women is unknown. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the wage differential between formal and informal employment for men and women. Design/methodology/approach: To evaluate the wage differential between the formal and informal economy for men and women, data are reported from a 2017 survey involving 8,533 household interviews conducted in Kosovo. Findings: Using decomposition analysis and after controlling for other determinants of wage differentials, the finding is that the net hourly earnings of men in formal employment are 26% higher than men in informal employment and 14% higher for women in formal employment compared with women in informal employment. Practical implications: Given the size of the wage differential, the costs for employers will need to significantly increase in terms of the penalties and risks of detection if informal employment is to be prevented, along with more formal employment opportunities using active labour market policies for vulnerable groups, perhaps targeted at men (who constitute 82.8% of those in informal employment). Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to evaluate the differentials in wage rates in the formal and economy from a gender perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The dominant theorisation of the informal economy views participants as rational economic actors operating in the informal economy when the expected benefits exceed the perceived costs of being caught and punished. Recently, an alternative theory has emerged which views participants as social actors operating in the informal economy due to their lack of vertical trust (in governments) and horizontal trust (in others). The aim of this paper is to evaluate these competing theorisations. Design/methodology/approach: To do so, data are reported from special Eurobarometer surveys conducted in 2007, 2013 and 2019 in eight West European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). Findings: Using probit regression analysis, the finding is that increasing the expected likelihood of being caught and level of punishment had a weak significant impact on the likelihood of participating in the informal economy in 2007, and there was no significant impact in 2013 and 2019. However, greater vertical and horizontal trust is significantly associated with a lower level of participation in the informal economy in all three time periods. Practical implications: The outcome is a call for a policy to shift away from increasing the expected level of punishment and likelihood of being caught, and towards improving vertical and horizontal trust. How this can be achieved is explored. Originality/value: Evidence is provided in a Western European context to support a shift away from a rational economic actor to a social actor approach when explaining and tackling the informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This article aims to measure inequality of income and opportunities at the national and state levels in Brazil, highlighting their acceptable and unacceptable components. Design/methodology/approach: To this end, a lower-bound estimate of income inequality (MLD) and inequality of opportunity (IOp) was developed using data from the National Household Sample Survey between 2001 and 2014. Findings: It shows that the disparity of income measured by the MLD decreased 26.7 percent, while IOp measured by the IOp decreased 25.6 percent during that period. The decline in total inequality can be attributed to a 48.5 percent decrease of its unfair component and 51.5 percent decrease of its fair component. The average income of the most disadvantaged group (non-white women working in the informal sector) is shown to be only 29.5 percent of the income of the most advantaged group (formally employed white men). The groups at the greatest disadvantage were most benefited by the increase in income. Originality/value: Beyond comparisons among countries, analysis at the subnational level make it possible to identify how the process that generates inequality acts in each state, revealing patterns undetected in the aggregate analysis. Its decomposition generates two products that are useful to policy-makers. The first is a base estimate of the degree of IOp present in society, which may be expressed as an indicator of the degree of IOp. The second examines the portion of total inequality attributable to IOp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between corruption and government debt through a regime-based approach. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis makes use of a panel of 120 countries, spanning the period 1999–2015. The study makes use of the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) methodological approach, as well as two alternative measures of corruption. Findings: The empirical results document that the relationship between corruption and debt is non-linear, while a strong threshold effect was present as well. Public debt appears to respond faster to a high corruption regime compared to a low corruption regime, while an increase in the size of the shadow economy, government expenses, the inflation rate, interest payments on debt and military expenditure all increased the debt to GDP ratio. By contrast, an increase in GDP per capita, the secondary school enrollment ratio and the ratio of tax revenues to GDP led to a fall in the debt to GDP ratio. The findings survive certain robust checks when the role of the 2008 financial crisis is explicitly considered, as well as when two separate country samples were considered, i.e. developed vs developing countries. Practical implications: Governments should aim to control both corruption and the size of the shadow economy if they really wish to reduce any high levels of their public debt. As debt levels respond faster to high corruption regimes, it is necessary that measures to reduce corruption are complemented by higher GDP per capita growth rates, enrolment rates and higher tax revenues. Originality/value: The novelty of the paper is that it investigates for the first time, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the presence of non-linearity between corruption and government debt. It proposes non-linear panel cointegration and causality tests, as well as a non-linear panel error correction model that allows for smooth changes between regimes, hence, examining causal relationships in each regime separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate the Tanzanian shadow economy (SE) from 2003 to 2015 and test the statistical relationships between the SE and its potential causes and indicators.Design/methodology/approach The econometric analysis is based on a multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model. To calibrate the SE from the estimates, the authors adopt the value of 55.4 percentage of the SE to official GDP from the literature for the base year 2005.Findings The SE ranges from 52 to 61 per cent of official GDP and slightly decreases from 2013 to 2015. Increase in inflation, unemployment and government spending were the main drivers of the SE dynamics.Research limitations/implications Given the challenges facing estimation of the SE (e.g. small sample size, exogenous estimate to calibrate the model, meaning of the latent variable), quantification of SE should be considered to be rough measures.Practical implications To lower the size of the SE, the government needs to keep inflation and unemployment stable over time, to reduce government spending because it creates pressure on tax collection due to the limited tax base.Originality/value This is the first study specifically focused on Tanzanian SE based on the MIMIC approach. Existing estimates of Tanzanian SE are calculated by monetary models or apply a common MIMIC specification to the worldwide context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nonlinear relationship between shadow economy and income inequality and determine whether the size of shadow economy can influence the level of income inequality.Design/methodology/approach Both parametric (panel OLS) and nonparametric/semiparametric regression suggested by Robinson (1988) will be used to capture the dynamic nonlinear relationship between these variables using unbalanced panel data of 154 countries from 2000 to 2007. Additionally, the relationship between income inequality and shadow economy on both developed and developing countries will be analyzed and compared.Findings First, semiparametric analysis and nonparametric analysis are significantly different than parametric analysis and better in nonlinear analysis between income inequality and shadow economy. Second, income inequality and shadow economy resemble an inverted-N relationship. Third, the relationship between income inequality and shadow economy is different in developed countries (OECD countries) and developing countries, where OECD countries have similar inverted-N relationship as before. However, for developing countries, income inequality and shadow economy show an inverted-U relationship, similar to the original Kuznets hypothesis.Practical implications This study suggests that there is a possible trade-off between income inequality and shadow economy and helps policy makers in solving both problems effectively.Originality/value Despite the growing importance of income inequality and shadow economy, literature linking the two variables is scarce. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no literature that nonlinearly links these two variables. Furthermore, the dynamics of the relationship between these two variables in developed countries and developing countries will be explored as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - Recently, a small but burgeoning literature has argued that tax non-compliance cannot be fully explained using the conventional rational economic actor approach which views non-compliance as occurring when the pay-off is greater than the expected cost of being caught and punished. Instead, a social actor approach has emerged which views tax non-compliance as higher when "tax morale", defined as the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, is low. To advance this social actor model, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the individual and national heterogeneity in tax morale, which is crucial if tax compliance is to be improved. Design/methodology/approach - To do this, the authors report data from the 2010 Life in Transition Survey on tax morale in 35 Eurasian countries. Findings - Logit econometric analysis reveals, on the one hand, that there is higher tax morale among middle-aged, married, homeowners with children, with a university degree and employed, and on the other hand, that there is higher tax morale in more developed countries with stronger legal systems and less corruption, and higher levels of state intervention in the form of both taxation and expenditure. Research limitations/implications - Rather than continue with the rational actor approach, this paper reveals that how an emergent social actor approach can help to more fully explain tax non-compliance and results in a different policy approach focused upon changing country-level economic and social conditions associated with low tax morale and thus non-compliance. Practical implications - These results display the specific populations with low tax morale which need targeting when seeking to tackle tax non-compliance. Originality/value - This paper provides a new way of explaining and tackling tax non-compliance in Eurasian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose To transcend the current debates about whether participation in the informal sector is a result of informal workers “exclusion” or their voluntary “exit” from the formal sector, the purpose of this paper is to propose and evaluate the existence of a dual informal labour market composed of an exit-driven “upper tier” and exclusion-driven “lower-tier” of informal workers.Design/methodology/approach To do this, data from a 2013 Eurobarometer survey involving 27,563 face-to-face interviews across the European Union is reported.Findings The finding is that in the European Union, there is a dual informal labour market with those participating in the informal sector due to their exclusion from the formal sector being half the number of those doing so to voluntarily exit the formal sector. Using a logistic regression analysis, the exclusion-driven “lower tier” is identified as significantly more likely to be populated by the unemployed and those living in East-Central Europe and the exit-driven “upper tier” by those with few financial difficulties and living in Nordic nations.Research limitations/implications The results reveal the need not only to transcend either/or debates about whether participants in the informal sector are universally exclusion-or exit-driven, and to adopt a both/and approach that recognises a dual informal labour market composed of an exit-driven upper tier and exclusion-driven lower tier, but also for wider research on the relative sizes of these two tiers in individual countries and other global regions, along with which groups populate these tiers.Originality/value This is the first evaluation of the internal dualism of the informal sector in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper, the first one to use individual-level Turkish panel data, examines the labor market transitions in Turkey along the formal/informal employment divide. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the limited body of empirical evidence available on mobility and informality in the Turkish labor market.Design/methodology/approach Toward this end, the authors use Turkish income and Living Conditions Survey panel data for 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 to compute the Markov transition probabilities of individuals moving across six different labor market states: formal-salaried (FS), informal-salaried, formal self-employed, informal self-employed, unemployed and inactive. In order to examine the nature of mobility patterns in more detail, the authors then estimate six multinomial logit models individually for each transition adopting a number of individual and employment characteristics as explanatory variables.Findings The authors find evidence that mobility patterns are fairly similar across different time spans, the probability of remaining in initial state is higher than the probability of transition into another state for all the labor market states, except for unemployment, there is only very limited mobility into the FS state. Gender, education and sector of economic activity are observed to display significant effects on mobility patterns. The results reveal several relationships between the covariates and likelihood of variant transitions.Research limitations/implications This study provides a comprehensive and detailed diagnosis of the Turkish labor market. The market is observed to display a rather static structure throughout the period considered. The results indicate that a well recognition of underlying dynamics may help policy makers to produce various effective tools for addressing informality.Originality/value First study to analyze labor market mobility across formal/informal sectors using newly available panel data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Grounded in an emergent recognition that those people in formal employment conduct the vast majority of work in the shadow economy, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate for the first time the degree to which shadow work is conducted by those in formal jobs and the characteristics of those in formal employment who participate in the shadow economy. Design/methodology/approach – To do this, the authors report a 2007 survey of participation in the shadow economy involving 26,659 face-to-face interviews conducted in 27 European Union (EU) member states. Findings – The finding is that in the EU, the formally employed undertake a disproportionate share of work in the shadow economy. Analysing the characteristics of the employed most likely to work in the shadow economy, however, it is those who benefit least from the formal economy, namely, younger unmarried men and on lower incomes living in rural areas, working in the construction sector and in small firms. Research limitations/implications – The outcome is a tentative call for recognition that although people in formal employment conduct the vast majority of work in the shadow economy, these are mostly particular vulnerable and weaker groups of the formally employed. Whether similar findings prevail at other spatial scales and in other global regions now needs investigating. Practical implications – This survey displays the need for policy not to target the unemployed but particular groups of the formally employed. Originality/value – The first extensive evaluation of the extent to which shadow work is conducted by those in formal jobs and the characteristics of those in formal employment who participate in the shadow economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The paper aims to focus the attention on a particular segment of the labor market – informal workers. Despite a large literature on migration, interesting and relevant questions remain to be studied. The paper investigates whether informal workers could be compared to political refugees in terms of their performance in the source and in the destination economies. The paper estimates the effects of wage differentials, education and other personal and labor market controls on the probability of migration. Design/methodology/approach – The paper studies empirically the probability of migration of workers engaged in informal activities in Brazil using a binary choice model (probit) with particular attention to the self-selection problem of migrants. The paper uses data from the Informal Urban Economy Survey (IBGE). Findings – The results show that the probability of migration of informal workers is negatively related to a worker's education level. The paper finds that the probability of migration is increasing in the ability bias and in wage differentials. The results bring new evidence regarding the possibility of negative selection of migrants considering their observable characteristics, while it corroborates a positive selection of ability or unobservable characteristics of informal worker migrants. The paper presents evidence that less-educated workers are more likely to migrate and show that informal workers migrants behave as economic refugees. Originality/value – To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to study the migration of workers engaged in informal activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between banking development and the size of shadow economies by employing data on 137 countries over the period from 1995 to 2007. Both cross-sectional and panel analysis suggest that an improvement in the development of the banking sector is associated with a smaller shadow economy. In addition, the authors find that both the depth and the efficiency of the banking sector matter in reducing the size of shadow economies. These results are robust to a variety of specifications that address multi-colinearity and endogeneity issues. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical cross-section and panel analysis were undertaken. Findings – The authors find that both the depth and the efficiency of the banking sector matter in reducing the size of shadow economies. Originality/value – This paper is original. Existing literature has identified a number of factors (e.g. the burden of taxation or regulation, the quality of government, legal enforcement, corruption, etc.) that create such incentives. In this paper the authors highlight another factor – the level of banking development – as a determinant of the shadow economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the validity of rival theorisations of the hidden economy that variously read this sphere as a leftover from a previous era, a by-product of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal economy. Until now, the common tendency among economic theorists has been to either universally privilege one theorisation over others, or to represent each theory as valid in different places. Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate their validity to the city of Moscow, a survey is reported involving 313 face-to-face interviews with inhabitants conducted during 2005/2006. Findings – The finding is that, although each theory is a valid representation of particular types of hidden work in Moscow, no one theory fully captures the diverse nature of the hidden economy in this city, and that only by combining all of them can a finer-grained understanding of the multifarious character of the hidden economy in this city be achieved. How these theories can be synthesised in order to develop this fuller and more nuanced understanding of the hidden economy is then outlined. Research limitations/implications – This study reveals that all these theories are needed to more fully understand the hidden economy of Moscow. Whether this is similarly the case elsewhere now needs to be investigated. Practical implications – The recognition of multifarious types of hidden work, each with different economic implications, reveals that different policy approaches are perhaps required towards various forms of hidden work. Originality/value – The paper re-theorises the hidden economy as a sphere composed of heterogeneous types of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the existence of skill differentiation between formal and informal labor markets. Design/methodology/approach - First, a theoretical model is developed under the assumption that concealment of production is increasingly costly for informal firms. Second, using data on the Brazilian self-employed economy, two methods are utilized to compare earnings in the formal versus the informal economy: propensity score and instrumental variable (IV) methods. For the IV estimations, state-level variables are used as instruments for individual's decisions. In addition, the effect of schooling on formality choice is analyzed. Findings - The theoretical model implies that more productive firms tend to operate formally and the proportion of workers employed by formal firms is larger for higher skilled workers. In the empirical analysis, it is found that formal firms are more productive than informal firms, controlling for workers' characteristics, and that higher workers' skill increase the probability of formal operation, as predicted by the theoretical model. Originality/value - The paper provides an original theoretical model of skill differentiation in labor markets and empirically evaluates the implications of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — Until now, in the absence of direct survey data, economists have had to rely on indirect methods that employ proxy indicators to evaluate the size of the shadow economy. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of the first direct survey of business perceptions of the magnitude of the shadow economy. Design/methodology/approach — This paper reports the results of a UK survey of business perceptions about the prevalence of the shadow economy in their sector, namely the Small Business Service's 2004/2005 Small Business Survey of 7,505 small businesses. Findings — Some 14 per cent of UK small businesses report that they are negatively affected by the shadow economy, with the average size of shadow work being estimated as 8 per cent of trade in their sector. The sectors identified as most affected by the shadow economy are land transport, construction, the motor vehicle trade, and hotels and restaurants, with new businesses and peripheral regions most affected. Research limitations/implications — This survey is based on business perceptions of its magnitude in their sector rather than first-hand accounts of the amount of shadow work that businesses conduct. Practical implications — These results display that it is wholly possible to conduct more direct surveys on the magnitude of the shadow economy so as to facilitate targeted public policy action. Originality/value — This is the first direct survey in the advanced economies of business perceptions regarding the magnitude of the shadow economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the nature of suppliers participating in informal markets. Evidence of distinct profiles in people engaged in barter and vendor behaviors; Assessment of expenditure levels between the barter/vendor group and informal suppliers; Evaluation of consumers and suppliers in the informal economy.

Attempts to model the informal sector and its links to other parts of the developing economy. Roles and characteristics of the informal sector; Development of a model of a dual economy which can be used to characterize the relationship of the informal sector to the rest of the economy; Two types of dualism; Analysis of the employment profile during modernization.