Evaluating the policy approach towards the undeclared economy in FYR Macedonia

Williams, Colin C.; Dzhekova, Rositsa; Franić, Josip; Mishkov, Lyubo

doi:10.1504/ijesb.2015.067291

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Indeed, this is similarly the case in FYR Macedonia, which is the focus of this paper. Only employees have been so far surveyed (Mojsoska Blazevski and Williams 2018;Williams and Bezeredi 2018), not employers who are the ones deciding to pay envelope wages. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to explain why employers pay envelope wages and how employers can be prevented from doing so.…”

Section: Explaining and Tackling Under-declared Employment: Review Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining and Tackling Under-Declared Employment in FYR Macedonia: The Employers Perspective

Williams

Bezeredi

2018

South East European Journal of Economics and Business

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The aim of this paper is to evaluate how employers who illegally under-report their employees’ salaries to evade paying the full tax and social contributions owed can be explained and tackled. These employers have been conventionally explained as rational economic actors doing so when the benefits outweigh the costs, and thus the solution is to increase the sanctions and/or probability of detection. An alternative social actor approach, however, explains employers as under-reporting salaries because of their lack of both vertical trust (i.e., their beliefs are not in symmetry with the laws and regulations) and horizontal trust (i.e., they believe many others are non-compliant). Reporting a 2015 survey of 450 employers in FYR Macedonia, the finding is that there is no strong association between employers under-reporting salaries and their perceived level of penalties and risks of detection, but a strong significant association with both their level of vertical and horizontal trust. The theoretical and policy implications are then discussed.

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Section: Explaining and Tackling Under-declared Employment: Review Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining and Tackling Under-Declared Employment in FYR Macedonia: The Employers Perspective

Williams

Bezeredi

2018

South East European Journal of Economics and Business

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“…More than 4/5ths of those working in the undeclared economy do so on a selfemployed basis. Only 17% in Bulgaria and FYR of Macedonia and 13% in Croatia have declared they have done so as part of waged employment for business (Williams, Bezeredi, 2017).…”

Section: Grey Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to measure the unmeasurable: Project Grey developing capacities and capabilities for tackling undeclared work

Bejaković

2017

Croatian Review of Economic, Business and Social Statistics

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The term "not directly observed" or "the underground economy" refers to those economic activities that should be included in the GDP estimation but which are not recorded in the statistics business surveys or tax and administrative data used in the calculation of the estimates of national accounts because they are not directly observable. The unofficial or informal economy contains that part of the economic activity that is difficult to measure. Thus, in addition to the complex issue of defining the underground production, there is an even more demanding task of measuring it. Hitherto in the literature, various estimation methods of unofficial economy have been proposed and their results differ significantly. The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the various methods of its measurement. The unobserved economy poses estimation problems of economic aggregates that can be differentiated as the total lack of information and the distortion of available information. There is no universal optimal approach applicable to all countries or even to the same country at different periods. In the attempt to limit the underground economy, it is much better to obviate the causes than penalise the consequences. It is necessary to simplify the procedures enabling citizens to formalize their undeclared activities, to provide a tax system that is as stable as possible and a tax and regulatory burden that is as low as possible. What is crucial is the improvement of institutions, professionalization of civil service and removal of the huge impact of politics in the societies.

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Evaluating competing theories of informal employment: some lessons from a 28-nation European survey

Williams¹,

Windebank²

2015

IJBG

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Evaluating the policy approach towards the undeclared economy in FYR Macedonia

Cited by 7 publications

References 45 publications

Explaining and Tackling Under-Declared Employment in FYR Macedonia: The Employers Perspective

Explaining and Tackling Under-Declared Employment in FYR Macedonia: The Employers Perspective

How to measure the unmeasurable: Project Grey developing capacities and capabilities for tackling undeclared work

Evaluating competing theories of informal employment: some lessons from a 28-nation European survey

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