This paper investigates the determinants of informal economic activity. We present two equilibrium models of informality and test their implications using a survey of 48,000+ small firms in Brazil. We define informality as tax avoidance; firms in the informal sector avoid tax payments but suffer other limitations. In the first model there is a single industry and informal firms face a higher cost of capital and a limitation on size. As a result informal firms are smaller and have a lower capital labor ratio. When education is an imperfect proxy for ability, we show that the interaction of the manager's education and formality has a positive correlation with firm size. These implications are supported by our empirical analysis. The second model highlights the role of value added taxes in transmitting informality. It predicts that the informality of a firm is correlated to the informality of firms from which it buys or sells. The model implies that higher tolerance for informal firms in one production stage increases tax avoidance in downstream and upstream sectors. Empirical analysis shows that, in fact, various measures of formality of suppliers and purchasers (and its enforcement) are correlated with the formality of a firm. Even more interestingly, when we look at sectors where Brazilian firms are not subject to the credit system of value added tax, this chain effect vanishes.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
13486.
Length: Date of creation: Oct 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13486
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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.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
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