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An Expenditure Based Estimate of Britain's Black Economy Revisited

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Abstract

The seminal paper by Pissarides and Weber (1989) is one of several previous studies trying to measure the size of the black economy. Pissarides and Weber compared the relationship between food expenditure and income in two groups of workers, self-employed and employees in employment, assuming that employees reported income correctly. For a given level of reported income, the self-employed had a higher food expenditure than employees. Pissarides and Weber concluded that self-employed's actual income was 1.55 times reported income, and that this part of the black economy was about 5.5 percent of GDP in the UK in 1982. Presumably due to a too informal argumentation, Pissarides and Weber's estimators are not entirely correct and alternative estimators have been overlooked. In all, I suggest three different interval estimators for mean under-reporting. The first is obtained by formally solving optimization problems which Pissarides and Weber tried to solve informally. The other two follows from recognizing, and incorporating, parameter restrictions which were not fully appreciated.

Suggested Citation

  • Knut R. Wangen, 2005. "An Expenditure Based Estimate of Britain's Black Economy Revisited," Discussion Papers 414, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ssb:dispap:414
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    File URL: https://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/DP/dp414.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Panayiota Lyssiotou & Panos Pashardes & Thanasis Stengos, 2004. "Estimates of the black economy based on consumer demand approaches," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 622-640, July.
    2. Lindsay M. Tedds, 2004. "Nonparametric expenditure-based estimation of income under-reporting and the underground economy," Department of Economics Working Papers 2004-17, McMaster University.
    3. Pissarides, Christopher A. & Weber, Guglielmo, 1989. "An expenditure-based estimate of Britain's black economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 17-32, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Odd E Nygård & Joel Slemrod & Thor O Thoresen, 2019. "Distributional Implications of Joint Tax Evasion," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(620), pages 1894-1923.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

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