The determinants of corruption in transition economies

This paper examines the determinants of corruption in transition economies. We found that the progress of structural reform, comprising marketization, rule of law, and democratization had a crucial impact on the extent of corruption control in former socialist countries.     

Tax evasion in transition: Outcome of an institutional clash? Testing Feige's conjecture in Albania

A field survey of households was conducted in Tirana, Albania in 2000. A response rate of 89.3% yielded 1.340 valid questionnaires, allowing me to test Feige's (In: Nelson, J.M., Tilley, C., Walker, L. (Eds.), Transforming Post-communist Political Economics. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, p. 21) conjecture that more tax evasion will be observed, when formal and informal institutions clash. Respondents’ attitudes towards formal and informal institutions were obtained by applying factor analysis to their responses to a series of attitudinal questions. The theoretical importance of the interaction between formal and informal institutions in determining tax evasion finds empirical support in the data.     

Measuring the Underground Economy with the Currency Demand Approach: A Reinterpretation of the Methodology,With an Application to Italy

We contribute to the debate on how to assess the size of the underground (or shadow) economy by proposing a reinterpretation of the traditional Currency Demand Approach (CDA) à la Tanzi. In particular, we introduce three main innovations. First, we take a direct measure of the value of cash transactions—the flow of cash withdrawn from bank accounts relative to total non‐cash payments—as the dependent variable in the money demand equation. This allows us to avoid unrealistic assumptions on the velocity of money and the absence of any irregular transaction in a given year, overcoming two severe critiques to the traditional CDA. Second, in place of the tax burden level, usually intended as the main motivation for non‐compliance, we include among the covariates two direct indicators of detected tax evasion. Finally, we control also for the role of illegal production considering crimes like drug dealing and prostitution, which—jointly with the shadow economy—contributes to the larger aggregate of the non‐observed economy and represents a significant component of total cash payments. We propose then an application of this “modified CDA” to a panel of 91 Italian provinces for the years 2005–08.     

The informal economy and the growth of small enterprises in Russia1

This article uses Russian regional data to estimate the determinants of the informal economy and to examine the relationship between the informal economy and the growth of legally registered small private enterprises during the transition period. After obtaining an estimate of the size of the informal economy in each Russian region from 1992 to 1999, an analysis is performed to find whether reform progress and institutional qualities account for the informal economy. An evaluation of the links between the informal economy and the growth of small enterprises within Russia is then carried out. The findings suggest that Russia's informal economy resulted from a delay in reform and low qualities of institutions. It was found that the growth of small enterprises is positively affected by the informal economy. These results imply that the informal economy helped entrepreneurial activities to grow in the face of government failure, but these informal activities tend to become official over time.     

A note on measuring the unofficial economy in the former Soviet Republics1

This note argues that the most commonly used estimates of the size of the unofficial economies in the former Soviet republics are flawed. Most important, they are based on calculations that disregard the variation in unofficial economic activity across space in the pre‐transition Soviet Union. In addition, these estimates appear to understate the size of the unofficial economies in these countries. We propose alternative estimates and find that they are more strongly related to the institutional factors commonly used to explain the size of the unofficial sector. Our estimates also show that the size of a country's pre‐transition unofficial economy is an important predictor of its size during the transition. This suggests that the size of the unofficial economy is to a large extent a historical phenomenon only partly determined by contemporary institutional factors. JEL classification: O17, P2, P3.     

Explaining participation in the undeclared economy in Central and Eastern Europe: a demand-side approach

To explain participation in the undeclared economy, the conventional supply-side approach evaluates the reasons people work in this sphere. This article, for the first time in Central and Eastern Europe, explains the undeclared economy using a demand-side approach which evaluates citizens’ motives for purchasing undeclared goods and services. Here, three potential explanations for purchasing undeclared goods and services, grounded in rational economic actor, social actor and institutional imperfections theoretical perspectives, are evaluated. Reporting data from 11,131 face-to-face interviews conducted in 11 Central and Eastern European countries in 2013, the main finding is that all three explanations are used by consumers, demonstrating the need for a synthesis of these approaches. A multinomial regression analysis identifies the specific groups variously using the undeclared economy to obtain a lower price, for social or redistributive rationales, or due to formal institutional imperfections. The implications for theorising and tackling the undeclared economy are then explored.     

Job creation and job destruction in the presence of informal markets

In developing economies, the fraction of informal workers can be as high as 70% of total employment. For economies with significant informal sectors, business cycle fluctuations and labor market policy interventions can have important effects not only on the unemployment rate, but also on the allocation of workers across regulated and unregulated jobs. In this paper, using worker flows data from Brazil, we build, calibrate, and simulate a two-sector search and matching labor market model, in which firms have the choice of hiring workers formally or informally. We show that our model can explain well the main cyclical patterns that lead to those cyclical reallocations. We also show how the effect of government interventions in the labor market depend on the magnitude of the reallocation of labor across regulated and unregulated sectors. For our calibration, policies that decrease the cost of formal jobs, or increase the cost of informality, raise the share of formal employment while reducing unemployment.     

Tax reform in Georgia and the size of the shadow economy

This study applies three different methods widely used in the literature to track changes in shadow economic activity in Georgia following a drastic tax reform in 2005. The first method is a currency demand approach based on macrolevel data. The second and third methods rely on micro level data from household surveys. Overall, we find evidence that the amount of income underreporting decreased in the years following the reform. The biggest change is observed for households headed by a farmer, followed by ‘other’ types of households where the head does not report any working status. Employed and self‐employed households appear very similar before the tax reform and show minimal adjustment in income reporting in the post‐reform period. Results, however, suggest that much of any difference may have come from increased enforcement efforts rather than rate changes.     

Survey on the Shadow Economy and Undeclared Earnings in OECD Countries

Abstract. In most OECD countries the policy instrument of choice to prevent people from working in the shadows has been deterrence. While deterrence is well founded from a theoretical point of view, the empirical evidence on its success is weak: tax policies and state deregulation appear to work much better. The discussion of the recent literature underlines that in addition to economic opportunities, the overall situation in the labor market and unemployment are crucial for an understanding of the dynamics of the shadow economy.     

Legal pluralism in post-conflict Sierra Leone

We examine the interaction between two legal systems in post-conflict Sierra Leone. To do that, we measure the impact of competition between state and non-state legal authorities on the number of disputes and on the amount of fines charged per dispute. Our results suggest a potential negative externality between regimes for civil disputes that is, an increase in the cost of apprehending a person and a reduction in the amount of fines per dispute collected when two regimes operate in the same village. This indicates that a potential benefit to the local people from multiple competing regimes is a reduction on expected authoritative expropriation.     

Bad loans,soft budget constraints and the political economy of financial market reform in transition economies

Financial market imperfections and especially the bad debt problem are among the most important factors impeding economic restructuring in transition economies. This paper analyses the implications of non-performing loans for the lending policy of banks and for the ensuing allocation of credit. It is shown that a lending bias exists in favour of old debtors, which not only impedes structural change but may also counteract policies intended to harden budget constraints and to promote restructuring. The paper also discusses from a political economy perspective, why despite these negative implications financial market reforms were not pursued more forcefully in most countries.     

A Measure of the Shadow Economy in a Small Economy: Evidence from Household‐Level Expenditure Patterns

In this paper we measure the size of the shadow economy in North Cyprus by using micro‐econometric approaches and then calculate its implications on national accounts and fiscal balances. There is a relatively new strand of literature that focuses on comparing income–expenditure patterns of households to calculate the degree of underreporting of income levels by self‐employed and privately employed individuals, as compared with public servants. We use the 2008 Household Budget Survey of North Cyprus and analyze the differences in food consumption patterns among three kinds of employees: self‐employed, privately employed, and public. We found that self‐employed and privately employed individuals underreport their income levels by 20 percent and 13 percent, respectively, compared with publicly employed individuals. This has important implications for the aggregate economy in North Cyprus, where we estimate that the shadow economy created by underreporting is as much as 8.6 percent of GNP and 11.1 percent of total tax revenue.     

Law and credit constraints in transition economies1

Using a survey of over 4,000 firms in 21 transition economies, this paper investigates how legal extensiveness (law on the books) and legal effectiveness (law in practice) affect availability of bank finance. Our findings suggest that both law on the books and law in practice are important, but that they impact firms of different sizes differently. Small firms appear to be the most credit constrained in countries with weak creditor rights and with weak contract enforcement, while large firms are the most credit constrained in countries with weak courts and unclear and inconsistent laws pertaining to firms’ business operations.     

Structure and performance of the service sector in transition economies1

This paper examines the performance of the service sector in the Eastern European transition economies during the 1997–2004 period. The performance of the service sector as a whole and of its sub‐sectors is very heterogeneous within the region. Service sub‐sectors that are information and communications technology producers or users and those using skilled labour more intensively exhibit the highest labour productivity growth. Our estimates show a positive and significant effect of liberalization on service labour productivity growth that is stronger for sub‐sectors that are more distant from the technological frontier. Service liberalization is also shown to have a positive effect on labour productivity levels and growth of downstream manufacturing industries.     

转轨时期国有企业资产转让价格过低的形成机制分析

转轨国家在大量出售国有企业资产的过程中,都出现了售价过低的现象。针对这一问题,首先从经济学理论入手探求一般意义上的企业资产转让价格过低的形成机制。然后结合转轨国家政治、经济、社会等方面的特殊性,挖掘转轨国家国有企业资产转让价格过低的深层原因。最终得出转轨国家国有企业资产转让价格过低主要是市场机制作用的结果。并且在此基础上,给出我国国有企业主要是国有中小型企业和乡镇企业产权改革的一些参考建议。     

Wages,participation and unemployment in the economic transition of urban China1

Wages, participation and unemployment are major topics for researchers of the labour market. How have these measures evolved in the economic transition of urban China? Have they evolved in accordance with those in the Statistical Yearbook of China (produced by the National Bureau of Statistics, China) and previous studies? We find that the estimated wage level based on Urban Household Survey (UHS) data was higher than that in the Statistical Yearbook in earlier years, but the relationship has reversed since 1999. Our estimated participation rate is lower than that of Giles et al. (2006) but higher than Dong et al. (2007) and Maurer‐Fazio et al. (2007) . The analysis shows that the unemployment rate is lower than that estimated with the China Urban Labor Survey data in Giles et al. (2005) . Our estimation results on unemployment rates turn out to be more similar to those in Dong et al. (2007) but are different from those in Hu and Sheng (2007) . This analysis provides the first systematic comparison of the wage level from different sources, and supplements the existing estimates on participation and unemployment using a more representative dataset for urban China.     

Are property rights enough?Re‐evaluating a big‐bang claim1

We investigate the claim made by proponents of the big‐bang strategy that the establishment of property rights in an economy in transition creates its own demand for the enforcement of laws to protect those rights. Our model contains a government engaging in activities to accomplish objectives that depend on public support for the enforcement of the rule of law and agents who interpret the level of activities of the government as indications of the government's intent to enforce the rule of law. Agents, using the level of government activities as an input to their decisions, choose whether to support the government's objectives. We establish conditions under which the level of activities chosen by the government maximizes its benefits, and simultaneously induces the constituency to support enforcement of the rule of law. These conditions provide a basis for the argument for the implementation of the big‐bang policy. When these conditions do not hold, however, we show that the level of activities that maximizes the government's benefits may have only a minor impact on support for the enforcement of the rule of law. Two characteristics play an important role in these conditions: the initial level of crime and the types of activities the government chooses to undertake. We present examples showing that the initial level of crime has the more dramatic effect on subsequent support for the rule of law.