This paper investigates the response of the shadow economy to banking crises. Our empirical analysis, based on a large sample of countries, suggests that the informal sector is a powerful buffer, which expands at times of banking crises and absorbs a large proportion of the fall in official output. To rationalise our evidence, we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model which accounts for financial frictions and nominal rigidities. In line with the empirical literature on the shadow economy, we assume that in the informal sector access to external finance is limited, and the production technology is relatively more labour intensive. Following a banking shock in the official sector, the model predicts a large negative transmission to the unofficial economy: about 60% of the official sector contraction is absorbed by the growth of the shadow economy.
This paper estimates the effects of exogenous changes in income and consumption taxes. The tax shocks are proxied with a narrative account of tax liability changes in the United Kingdom. Income tax cuts have large effects on GDP, private consumption, and investment. The effects of consumption tax cuts are modest and not statistically significant on GDP and its components. Shifting the burden of taxation from income to consumption is expansionary. Consistent with conventional public finance theories, these results indicate that it is crucial to distinguish between direct and indirect taxation when studying the transmission mechanism of fiscal policy. (JEL E21, E22, E23, H24, H25)
This paper investigates the response of the shadow economy to banking crises. Our empirical analysis, based on a large sample of countries, suggests that the informal sector is a powerful buffer, which expands at times of banking crises and absorbs a large proportion of the fall in official output. To rationalise our evidence, we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model which accounts for financial frictions and nominal rigidities. In line with the empirical literature on the shadow economy, we assume that in the informal sector access to external finance is limited, and the production technology is relatively more labour intensive. Following a banking shock in the official sector, the model predicts a large negative transmission to the unofficial economy: about 60% of the official sector contraction is absorbed by the growth of the shadow economy.
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