IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/eaeuec/v47y2009i2p37-52.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Commonality of Envelope Wages in Eastern European Economies

Author

Listed:
  • Colin C. Williams

Abstract

This paper evaluates the common practice in East European economies whereby formal employers pay their formal employees both a declared wage and an undeclared "envelope wage." Until now, little survey evidence has been available. Here, an extensive Eurobarometer survey involving 10,171 face-to-face interviews in East European economies conducted in 2007 is reported. It finds that one in ten formal employees had received envelope wages in the previous year, amounting on average to two-fifths of their gross annual wage. This is found to be a ubiquitous practice, albeit more common in some countries, sectors, occupations, and population groups than others. A more in-depth evaluation of this wage practice in Eastern Europe and greater discussion of how the arrangement might be tackled is called for.

Suggested Citation

  • Colin C. Williams, 2009. "The Commonality of Envelope Wages in Eastern European Economies," Eastern European Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(2), pages 37-52, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:eaeuec:v:47:y:2009:i:2:p:37-52
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://mesharpe.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=B6758200M42R9424
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Colin C Williams & Junhong Yang, 2017. "Tackling falsely-declared salaries in Bulgaria: evidence from a 2015 survey," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 3, pages 333-351, September.
    2. Pantea, Smaranda, 2017. "Did minimum wage increases reduce employment? Panel data evidence from Romania," MPRA Paper 79863, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Artjoms Ivlevs, 2016. "Remittances and informal work," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 37(7), pages 1172-1190, October.
    4. Merike Kukk & Karsten Staehr, 2014. "Income underreporting by households with business income: evidence from Estonia," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 257-276, June.
    5. Williams Colin C. & Bezeredi Slavko, 2018. "Explaining and Tackling Under-Declared Employment in FYR Macedonia: The Employers Perspective," South East European Journal of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 13(2), pages 19-31, December.
    6. Colin C. Williams, 2014. "Explaining cross-national variations in the prevalence of envelope wages: some lessons from a 2013 Eurobarometer survey," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(6), pages 524-542, November.
    7. International Monetary Fund, 2016. "Cross-Country Report on Minimum Wages: Selected Issues," IMF Staff Country Reports 2016/151, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Pantea, Smaranda, 2020. "The effect of minimum wage hikes on employment: Evidence from regional panel data from Romania," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 44(3).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:eaeuec:v:47:y:2009:i:2:p:37-52. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MEEE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.