There is considerable agreement internationally about the factors that determine the relative size of the underground economy (tax burden, regulation, enforcement, confidence in government, labour force characteristics, and morality) and that evidence of underground activity will be captured in several economic indicators (GDP, currency in circulation, and consumption rates). Until recently, however, the methods that have been employed to measure the underground economy focused on only a few causal factors, one indicator, and only produced an estimate for one particular point in time. There exists a modeling technique that treats the underground economy as an unobservable or latent variable and incorporates multiple indicator and multiple causal (MIMIC) variables. The MIMIC model uses information contained within relevant indicator and causal variables to estimate a time-path of the size of the hidden economy. In applying this estimation technique to Canada data, my results indicate that, the underground economy in Canada grew steadily relative to measured GDP over the period 1976 to 2001. The value of the broadly defined underground economy grew from about 7.5% of GDP in 1976 to about 15.3% in 2001. In real (1997) dollar terms, it increased from about $38 billion to $159 billion.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
4229.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Ekkehart Schlicht).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Find related papers by JEL classification: O51 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - U.S.; Canada O17 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
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.:
Cited by: (explanations, 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.)