PANOECONOMICUS, 2019, Vol. 66, Issue 5, pp. 589-610 UDC 339.192 Recevied: 08 November 2016; Accepted: 17 September 2017. https://doi.org/10.2298/PAN161108022R Original scientific paper Barry Reilly Shadow Economy - Is an Enterprise University of Sussex, Department of Economics, Falmer, Brighton, Survey a Preferable Approach? UK
[email protected] Summary: The direct approaches to measuring the shadow economy have not Gorana Krstić been used exten-sively until very recently. A relatively simple method has been Corresponding author developed (Talis J. Putninš and Arnis Sauka 2015) using an income approach University of Belgrade, Faculty of Economics, to measuring GDP and exploiting survey data on unreported employee wages Department of Statistics and and the business income generated by enterprises, which was provided by own- Mathematics, Belgrade, ers/managers of such enterprises. This paper illustrates the advantages of this Serbia approach over indirect ones through applying it to two EU candidate countries.
[email protected] This is first done by measuring the size of the shadow economy and then by providing estimates of the factors which cause enterprises to engage in shadow economic activity. Estimates of these factors suggest a number of policy ap- proaches that could reduce the size of the shadow economy in countries similar to the ones we have used here. This research is supported by the Key words: Shadow economy, Unreported income, Enterprises and entrepre- UNDP Montenegro RFP 29/14 Research on Informal neurs. Economy/Informal Employment Within “2015 National Human Development Report” ref. no. 16824. JEL: E01, E25, E26. In spite of decades of research, there is still no consensus among researchers on what are the most reliable approaches for measuring a shadow economy.