Documento de trabajo
Shadow Economies All over the World: New Estimates for 162 Countries from 1999 to 2007
Fecha
2010Registro en:
Series Documentos de Trabajo, No. 322, Julio, 2010
Autor
Schneider, Friedrich
Buehn, Andreas
Montenegro Muñoz, Claudio
Institución
Resumen
This paper presents estimations of the shadow economies for 162 countries, including
developing, Eastern European, Central Asian, and high-income countries over the period
1999 to 2006/2007. According to the estimations, the weighted average size of the shadow
economy (as a percentage of "official" gross domestic product) in Sub-Saharan Africa is
38.4 percent; in Europe and Central Asia (mostly transition countries), it is 36.5 percent,
and in high-income OECD countries, it is 13.5 percent. The authors find a clear negative
trend in the size of the shadow economy: The unweighted average of the 162 countries in
1999 was 34.0% and in 2007 31.0%; hence a reduction of 3 percentage points!.The
driving forces of the shadow economy are an increased burden of taxation (both direct and
indirect), combined with labor market regulations and the quality of public goods and
services, as well as the state of the “official” economy.