The paper quantitatively investigates, in general equilibrium, the interaction between the firms' choice to operate in the formal or the informal sector and government policy on taxation and enforcement, given a level of regulation. A static version of Ghironi and Melitz’s (2005) industry model is used to show that firms with lower productivity endogenously choose to operate in the informal sector. I use cross-country data on taxes, measures of informality, and measures of regulation (entry and compliance costs, red tape, etc) to back out how high the enforcement levels must be country by country to make the theory match the data. Welfare gains from policy reforms can be fairly large. I find also that welfare gains from reducing regulation are almost twice those computed for the policy reform. Finally, distortions associated with informality account for a factor of 1.5 of the output per capita difference between the richest and the poorest countries.
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Paper provided by Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies in its series Seminar Papers with number
751.
Length: 51 pages Date of creation: 06 Aug 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0751
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Aureo de Paula & Jose A. Scheinkman, 2006.
"The Informal Sector,"
Levine's Bibliography
122247000000001030, UCLA Department of Economics.
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
Aureo de Paula & Jose A. Scheinkman, 2007.
"The Informal Sector,"
PIER Working Paper Archive
07-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
[Downloadable!]
Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-De-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2002.
"The Regulation Of Entry,"
The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
MIT Press, vol. 117(1), pages 1-37, February.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio LopezdeSilanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2000.
"The Regulation of Entry,"
NBER Working Papers
7892, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Djankov, Simeon & La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei, 2001.
"The Regulation of Entry,"
Working Paper Series
rwp01-015, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
[Downloadable!]
Djankov, Simeon & La Porta, Rafael & López-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei, 2001.
"The Regulation of Entry,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
2953, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
James Andreoni & Brian Erard & Jonathan Feinstein, 1998.
"Tax Compliance,"
Journal of Economic Literature,
American Economic Association, vol. 36(2), pages 818-860, June.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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