Ukraine belongs to the group of countries which are known for the widespread phenomenon of subsistence and semi-subsistence farming. Individual farmers are not obliged to produce financial reports and their incomes belong to the category of unobservable incomes. When checking the eligibility for...

The paper attempts to explain how tax rates, the extent of corruption and various institutional aspects of the labour market influence the relative size of different segments (unemployment, employment, self-employment and activity in the hidden economy) of the labour market as well as the tax...

Cash payments are simple, secure, efficient and anonymous and therefore popular with consumers. At the same time, these properties also make cash a focal point for potential illegal uses. An oft-voiced opinion in the public debate is that cash promotes the shadow economy and is used as a means...

We use different empirical methods for estimating the use of cash in Norway. One method gives an estimate of the "maximum" value of cash use at point of sale. A second estimates the minimum use of cash in the society calculated from new information uncovered by a recent reorganisation of the...

Über Schwarzarbeit und Schattenwirtschaft wird vor allem in Zeiten von wirtschaftlichen Krisen gesprochen. Sie dienen dann als eine Art Puffer und gleichen die Härten einer Rezession gerade für Personen mit geringeren oder mittleren Einkommen aus. Gerade in Südeuropa ist Schattenwirtschaft...

The paper discusses possible directions and magnitudes of the relationship between the social security driven tax wedge, employment and shadow employment in Russia and Ukraine. The first section presents a summary of the economic and institutional background for development of the current size...

This paper addresses the issue of the gender pay gap in the formal and informal labour markets in Poland. The authors verify the hypothesis of the existence of a gender pay gap in informal work and compare this gap with the one observed in the formal (registered) labour market. Various analyses...

After a long period in which state-led development was the dominant economic paradigm, since the 1980s private sector development has been the focus for economic policy makers. It is probably no coincidence that economic growth, stagnant for a few decades in much of the developing world, took...

This volume was prepared by Benedikt Heid while he was working at the ifo Institute and the University of Bayreuth. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. It includes six self-contained...

Hybrider Selbstständigkeit wird zunehmend Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Über das wahre Ausmaß und die Besonderheiten dieser Erwerbsform ist allerdings nur wenig bekannt. Diese Studie widmet sich ihr erstmals auf Basis des Taxpayer-Panels. Es zeigt sich, dass es deutlich mehr hybride...