Badania nad rozmiarami szarej strefy – rys historyczny i główne wyzwania
Research on the Size of the Shadow Economy – A Historical Overview and Key Challenges

Author(s): Stanisław Cichocki
Subject(s): Public Finances, Socio-Economic Research
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: shadow economy; definitions of the shadow economy; methods of measuring the shadow economy
Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on challenges one encounters when investigating the shadow (also called informal) economy. We first present the main definitions of the shadow economy and discuss their pros and cons – we start with simple definitions and move to more complex ones. We then present a brief historical outline regarding the research about that phenomenon with an emphasis on measuring it worldwide and in Poland. Subsequently, we discuss the methods used to measure the shadow economy and describe their strengths and weaknesses. We touch upon micro methods but focus particularly on macro methods. In the last part we present our main conclusions.

• Details
• Contents