Underground Economies

The article explores the politics of life underground in Bucharest, Romania. It focuses on a tunnel passing under Bucharest's central train station, where a community of drug users and so‐called ‘homeless’ have made a long‐standing home, using a space that many others considered uninhabitable. Relying on extensive ethnographic observations and interviews undertaken within the tunnels, the article traces and illustrates the socio‐material entanglements characterizing life underground. It frames this assemblage of bodies, veins, syringes, substances and various relationships of power and affect, as a ‘propositional politics’ of home and life at the margins. Such a politics speaks of drug addiction and extreme marginalization, but also of a sense of belonging, reciprocal trust and care. In tracing such a politics, the article does not aim to romanticize the status of home in the underground or to treat it as the marginal antithesis of normative homeliness, but to reveal the ways in which an affirmative, self‐grounding politics of home emerges from the immanence of tunnel life within the fabric of the city. As such, the article contributes to debates around homing practices in conditions of uninhabitability and proposes a radical approach to the politics of life at the margins in the contemporary urban.

Metal recycling is a sustainable urban industry supplied by scrap metal formally collected from primary metal producers, manufacturers, and informal collectors of discarded recyclable materials. Increased worldwide demand for metal and the limited primary metal production capabilities of developing nations, particularly China, has raised the price of scrap metal and elevated scrap metal as the United States’ leading sustainable export, annually generating billions of dollars in revenue. This study theoretically situates formal scrap suppliers and scrap wholesalers (i.e. scrap yards) as elements of industrial symbiosis (Chertow MR, Annu Rev Energy Environ 25:313–337, 2000) and informal scrappers as urban mining agents (Brunner J Ind Ecol 15:339-341, 2011) whose behaviors strongly resemble that of social foragers (Giraldeau LA, Caraco T, Social foraging theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000). Using Detroit as a case study, empirical analyses, informed by field-based observations and interviews, were conducted to support each theoretical framework. Specific analysis topics included the impact of metal prices on green job creation in the metal recycling industry, the locational determinants of scrap yards, the possible role of unemployment on the informal scrapper population, the destructive impact of criminal informal metal collectors, and a geo-visualization of optimal locations to informally extract scrap metal in Detroit. The successful analyses demonstrated in this chapter support the applied theoretical frameworks as a valuable platform to study the metal recycling industry and also produced new empirical and ethnographic insights on scrap metal supply chains, which deserve more intensive research as a vehicle for urban sustainability.

Those engaging in tax non-compliance have been conventionally explained as rational economic actors partaking when the benefits outweigh the costs, and thus public administrations have sought to enforce compliance using a deterrence approach which increases the risk of detection and penalties. However, many have been found to not engage in tax non-compliance when the benefits exceed the costs. The result has been the emergence of a voluntary compliance approach viewing taxpayers as social actors who engage in tax non-compliance when there is a lack of vertical trust (in governments) and horizontal trust (in others). Using a probit regression analysis of data from special Eurobarometer surveys conducted in 2007, 2013 and 2019, the finding is that although the likelihood of participating in tax non-compliance is largely not associated with the level of penalties and risk of detection, it is significantly associated with the level of vertical and horizontal trust, with participation in tax non-compliance increasing with lower vertical and horizontal trust. The implications for theory and for how public administrations tackle tax non-compliance are then discussed.

La presente investigación emplea un caso extremo, el de las bandas ska del bar de Bernabé entre el 2005 y 2007 para dar cuenta de las formas de organización de las escenas musicales alternas en Lima. 

Se presentan los procesos históricos constitutivos de los géneros musicales en sus contextos de origen durante las tres olas del ska, las escenas musicales alternas limeñas y el ska en Lima.

Luego se observan las lógicas de articulación de personas-bandas-colectivos-escenas, como sistemas complejos autoorganizados.

A continuación se profundiza en cuáles son las prácticas y estrategias para la producción musical que se constatan en el medio urbano limeño, repasando cada función de la cadena de labores para la realización de ensayos, repertorios y conciertos. 

Luego se observa cuáles son las dinámicas de circulación de repertorios propios y ajenos, refiriendo a los macro circuitos de distribución musical y los medios masivos oficiales de difusión musical en Lima.

Finalmente refiere a cómo  el concierto se constituye en un espacio de articulación ritual en el que los cultores concretan el consumo musical mediante la comunicación pública de las obras creadas.

Al detallar estos procesos y dinámicas, podemos responder a nuestra pregunta de investigación ¿cuáles son las formas de organización de las escenas musicales alternas en Lima?, planteando que: Las escenas musicales alternas emplean la organización colectiva para la producción musical; el uso estratégico del capital social para el manejo de ciclos productivos paralelos, con lógicas propias, según cada contexto, articulando personas de todo origen sociocultural.

Estas posibilidades de conducta, con sus aportes, conflictos y contradiccciones, constituyen una parte fundamental de los medios de producción musical en el medio urbano limeño.  Son medios de producción de sentido, para cuya realización se articulan diversas cadenas productivas, generando bienes y servicios culturales que son constitutivos de las realidades personales y colectivas experimentadas por sus cultores. Son parte fundamental de nuestras culturas urbanas.

Ce mémoire propose une analyse du discours et de l’expérience corporelle des adeptes de la scène musicale électronique underground-house de Montréal. Il cherche à contribuer au champ des études sur les formations culturelles expressives contemporaines sur deux axes. Sur le plan méthodologique, cette recherche illustre la portée de l’entretien d’explicitation lorsqu’il s’agit d’accompagner la mise en mots d’impressions sensorielles, d’émotions, de pensées ou d’actions. Combinée à une démarche immersive de longue haleine sur le terrain, cette méthode innovante développée par le chercheur Pierre Vermersch (1994) s’avère ici un outil rigoureux donnant accès à la mémoire incarnée des sujets, laquelle regorge d’informations d’une étonnante précision. Sur le plan ethnographique, cette étude s’intéresse aux nouveaux espaces de solidarité et d’expression balisant l’expérience des Québécois de parents haïtiens issus des classes moyenne et moyenne élevée. Les résultats de cette recherche démontrent, en premier lieu, que l’expérience de la « vibe », expression idiomatique largement utilisée par les acteurs, constitue la clé de voûte maintenant la cohésion entre les représentations, les croyances et les activités corporelles des participants. En deuxième lieu, la scène underground-house se présenterait comme l’expression d’une nouvelle contre-culture en établissant une distance critique avec, d’une part, la « culture hip hop » commerciale et sa représentation médiatique « ghettoïsée » et, d’autre part, l’espace culturel dominant en promouvant une expérience de corps et d’esprit subversive. Cet espace de transmission et de communion inédit propose des modèles de sociabilités nouveaux qui contribuent de manière inusuelle au dialogue interculturel urbain montréalais.

The aim of this paper is to review the various policy approaches that can be used to tackle entrepreneurship in the shadow economy. To do this, it firstly reviews four possible policy options, namely taking no action, eradicating shadow entrepreneurship, moving legitimate entrepreneurship into the shadow economy, or transforming shadow entrepreneurship into legitimate entrepreneurship. Revealing that transforming shadow entrepreneurship into legitimate entrepreneurship is not only the most viable option but also the approach most commonly adopted by supra-national agencies and national governments, a review is then undertaken of how this can be achieved using either direct controls, which seek to increase the costs of shadow entrepreneurship and/or the benefits of legitimate entrepreneurship, or indirect controls that seek to generate a commitment to compliance and greater self-regulation. How these approaches can be combined is then reviewed. The outcome is a comprehensive review and evaluation of the various policy approaches available to policy-makers for addressing shadow entrepreneurship along with some recommendations regarding the way forward

The large cohort of workers in the “informal economy” commonly described as lying “beyond the protection of labour law” represent a serious challenge (though not the only one) to the adequacy and legitimacy of labour law’s normative tools and legitimating narratives. Drawing on a critical review of recent work at the ILO and by WIEGO (an international research-advocacy network focused on women in the informal economy), the thesis tries to provide insight into the nature of that challenge. The heterogeneity of informal work calls for prudence to avoid still-popular folk images rooted in the Fordist-era organization of work in the global North. Capturing that diversity instead requires “socio-economic” approaches attentive to the particulars of the networks of production that workers participate in, and the complex interaction between working practices and state regulation. Ultimately, however, providing a platform for workers to pursue their capabilities requires labour law to go beyond “protection” as a structuring discourse and embrace a broader normative horizon.

""Thanks to rationing and price control, Britain’s underground economy experienced a mid-century boom during the 1940s and early 1950s as producers, traders, and professional criminals helped consumers to get ‘a little bit extra’ ‘on the side’, ‘from under the counter’, or ‘off the back of a lorry’. Yet widespread evasion of regulations designed to ensure ‘fair shares for all’ did not undermine the austerity policies that characterised these years.

In Black Market Britain, Mark Roodhouse draws upon a wide range of source material, including recently declassified documents, to argue that all these little bits did not amount to a lot because Britons showed self-restraint in their illegal dealings. The means, motives, and opportunities for evasion were not lacking. The shortages were real and felt, regulations were not watertight, and enforcement was haphazard. Fairness, not patriotism and respect for the law, is the key to understanding this self-restraint. By invoking popular notions of a fair price, a fair profit, and a fair share, government rhetoric stymied black marketeering as would-be evaders had to justify their offences to themselves and others in terms of getting their fair share at no one else’s expense.

Black Market Britain underlines the importance of fairness to those seeking a richer understanding of economic life in modern Britain. Roodhouse reminds us that all trade is fair trade and all consumers are ethical consumers, at least according to their own lights; we just need to discover what those lights are.""

This paper critically evaluates the popular structuralist representation of informal workers as marginalized populations who work as dependent employees out of economic necessity and as a last resort. Reporting on an empirical survey of 1,518 informal workers in India, itreveals not only that a large proportion work on their own account as informal entrepreneurs, but also that not all do such work purely out of economic necessity and in the absence of alternative means of livelihood. The paper concludes by calling for a wider recognition of the opportunity-driven entrepreneurial endeavour of many working in the informal sector.

This paper investigates the precarious lives of the Kurdish kolbers, underground laborers who transport cargo on their backs across Iran's border with Iraq. Throughout their arduous journeys, kolbers experience various forms of violence, including direct shooting by border guards. Findings from interviews with the kolbers indicate that kolberi, a strenuous, dangerous, precarious type of labor, is a response to pervasive unemployment in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat), and a long-term consequence of the Iranian state's systematic economic disinvestment in the Kurdish region. Although kolbers assert agency within their labor at localized scales, the social organization of kolberi is a reaction to the Iranian state's biopolitical strategies of economic disinvestment and violence. Drawing on a biopolitical framework, we illustrate the analytical interconnections among the economic marginalization of Rojhelat, violence against the kolbers, and the kolbers' precarious lives. The article offers ideas for future research that come out of our examination of the complexities of kolberi-an examination that demonstrates the importance of incorporating political-economic, ethno-territorial, and biopolitical factors in analyses of underground border exchanges and precarious marginalized lives.

Purpose – Studies on women entrepreneurs either view women through a structuralist lens, as marginalised populations engaged in low-quality work, or through a neo-liberal lens, as engaged in relatively higher quality endeavour more as a rational choice. The aim of this paper is to evaluate
critically these explanations in relation to women entrepreneurs in the informal sector in India.
Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate the contrasting explanations of structuralist and new liberal approaches, questionnaire surveys were conducted in two phases, namely 2007 and 2010,over a period of several months. The sample design was stratified random and the sample was taken
from a range of cities in different parts of India.
Findings – The survey of 457 women entrepreneurs of the informal sector shows that although the structuralist representation is largely appropriate for women working as waged informal employees, it is not as valid for women informal entrepreneurs working on a self-employed basis. The results challenge the traditional understanding of the informal sector, and self-employed women in particular, and are discussed in the light of the institutional rational choice framework.
Research limitations/implications – The analysis highlights how the decision of entrepreneurship does not stand in isolation from other decisions and choices, is in line with
normative considerations, and is a collective rational choice for women entrepreneurs in the informal sector. This analysis is a first of its kind and calls for additional surveys to be undertaken of female (and male) informal entrepreneurs in other countries to establish this concept.
Originality/value – The analysis critically evaluates established explanations in relation to women
entrepreneurs in the inform

To advance understanding of the reasons for informal sector entrepreneurship, this article evaluates the determinants of crosscountry variations in the extent to which enterprises are unregistered when they start operating. Reporting the World Bank Enterprise Survey data on 67,515 enterprises across 142 countries, the finding is that one in five (19.9%) of the formal enterprises surveyed started-up unregistered, although this varies from all enterprises surveyed in some countries (e.g. Pakistan) to 1% of surveyed enterprises in Slovakia. To explain these crosscountry variations, four competing theories are evaluated which variously assert that nonregistration is determined by either: economic under-development and poorer quality governance (modernization theory); too much state interference (neoliberal theory); too little state intervention (political economy theory); or an incongruence between the laws and rules of formal institutions and the beliefs, values, and norms of informal institutions (institutional theory). A multilevel probit regression analysis confirms the modernization, political economy, and institutional theories but not neoliberal theory. Beyond economic under-development, therefore, nonregistration is associated with too little state intervention and the rules of formal institutions being incongruent with the socially shared beliefs of entrepreneurs. The article concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.

Recent research has revealed that a large proportion of entrepreneurs start-up their ventures operating on a wholly or partially off-the-books basis. Until now, it has been commonly assumed that those who operate in the informal economy are exclusively commercial entrepreneurs. They are assumed to be rational economic actors who weigh up the benefits of operating off-the-books against the costs of being caught and decide to operate in this manner. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically this a priori assumption. Reporting evidence from a 2005/6 survey involving face-to-face interviews with 102 informal entrepreneurs in Moscow in Russia, the finding is that such entrepreneurs are not purely commercially driven. Examining their rationales, informal entrepreneurs are found to range from purely rational economic actors pursuing for-profit logics through to purely social entrepreneurs pursuing purely social logics, with the majority somewhere in-between combining both for-profit and social rationales. Neither do their logics remain static over time. What begins as a commercial entrepreneurial venture may become more socially oriented over time or vice versa. So too do their logics vary socio-spatially. Those living in deprived populations are more socially-orientated, whilst those in relatively affluent populations are comparatively more profit-driven. The outcome is a call for a more nuanced explanation of the complex and heterogeneous logics of informal entrepreneurs.

To evaluate critically the recurring assumption that a job is either formal or informal, but never simultaneously both, this paper uncovers how in south-eastern Europe many formal employees receive not only a declared wage from their formal employer but also an additional undeclared (‘envelope’) wage. Reporting a 2007 EU-wide survey comprising 26,659 face-to-face interviews, some 1 in 6 (16%) formal employees in south-east Europe are found to be in these hybrid ‘under-declared’ jobs receiving on average 60% of their gross salary as an envelope wage. Uncovering how, despite this employment arrangement being unevenly distributed across countries, employee groups and businesses, it is not confined to small pockets but is ubiquitous across the south-east European labour market and beyond, the paper then concludes by discussing the implications for both policy and theory of the existence of ‘under-declared’ formal employment

This article introduces the concept of creole economics, a culturally informed view of the informal economy in Martinique, French West Indies. Local actors engaged in this economic practice are commonly known as débrouillards. Drawing on studies of French slavery and folklore, literary works by Caribbean authors, archival materials from Martinique, and the author's own ethnographic fieldwork, this argument suggests that cultural history and creole identities play a significant role in shaping local patterns of illicit earning. By extending the notion of creole adaptations to the economic domain, this work builds on the efforts of Caribbean scholars who have clarified the influence of creole adaptations in other areas, such as language, performance aesthetics, and belief systems. A débrouillard is the most intelligent person who succeeds in solving a problem first. He will take one underpaid job and then a second underpaid job to compensate for it. If he still needs more money, he will be forced to do something that doesn't correspond to his training. It is degrading to not be able to use your intellectual capacities. This is why many people do work on the side that they like. Forty-year-old male Martiniquais banker who maintains a profitable but un-declared farm on the side Prologue Like volcanic eruptions that form brand-new earth, creole societies of the Caribbean were fundamentally new constructions spewed from both resistance and accommodation to alien pressures from which there was no ready escape. In the context of the longest-running and most brutal labor system in human history, New World slaves produced and reproduced.

In many economies, there is a fragmented and uncoordinated approach across the multifarious government bodies responsible for tackling undeclared work and a limited involvement of social partners, as well as an incomplete range of policy measures used. To resolve this, a holistic integrated strategic approach has been proposed. This is where governments:
• Shift the objective from “reducing undeclared work” to “transforming undeclared work into declared work”;
• Develop a whole government coordinated approach, and
• Implement the full range of direct and indirect policy tools.
The aim of this study is to provide a baseline assessment of the progress of enforcement authorities in the Western Balkans towards adopting a holistic approach. To assess this, a questionnaire survey was sent to the tax administrations and labour inspectorates in Albania [AL], Bosnia and Herzegovina [BA], Kosovo*  [XK], Montenegro [ME], Republic of North Macedonia [MK] and Serbia [RS]. This report evaluates the self-reported progress made.

This paper develops a demographic model of the currency population by examining the birth and death rates of specific denominations of currency. This framework permits empirical estimation of the average lifetime of notes in circulation and hence the currency velocity (turnovers per year) of each denomination. The velocity of currency times the stock of currency produces estimates of the annual volume of cash payments. Since the volume of check payments (debits to checkable accounts) is regularly recorded, our estimates of cash payments can be used to estimate the total volume of transactions (MV) from the payment side of Fisher’s equation of exchange. The paper goes on to examine the “currency enigma” from the perspective of both “missing currency” and “missing payments”. The estimated volume of cash payments is so high when compared to personal consumption expenditures, that one is led to the conclusion that a large fraction of the US currency supply is held abroad, and that there is a sizable underground (unreported and perhaps unrecorded) economy in the United States.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to revenue loss for tourism enterprises and workers due to restrictions on movement. In response, governments have made available temporary financial support, but not to those tourist enterprises and workers in the undeclared economy. Reporting a 2019 Eurobarometer survey, this paper reveals that one in 165 European citizens engage in undeclared work in tourism and the groups involved. To bring these enterprises and workers onto the radar of the state, a voluntary disclosure initiative is advocated offering access to the temporary financial support for undeclared enterprises and workers disclosing their previous undeclared work.

This version is Chapter Five in: The Gypsy-American: An Ethnogeographic Study. 2002. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, pps, 67-77, but was originally published earlier as: "Gypsy Taskmasters, Gentile Slaves," in Matt T. Salo (ed.), The American Kalderas: Gypsies and the New World. Hackettstown, N.J.: Gypsy Lore Society, 1981:29-41.
~
Abstract: "This chapter feature Gypsy taskmasters, and certain non-Gypsies in
subservient roles, whom I will refer to as “Gentiles” due to their marked social distance from the Gypsies. I will lump the subservient Gentiles together in this discussion as “slaves” not only for effect, but because the English Gypsy scholar Thomas Acton reports (1974:75) such people are actually called “slaves” when they are sought out and employed as blacktoppers by Irish Travelers. Paraphrasing Acton, Irish Travelers recruit their slaves from skid row flophouses. Examples of Travelers’ slaves include an ex-sailor with a speech defect, and a mental defective. Acton supposes such people are very grateful to sleep in the back of a van and usually incapable of learning the blacktopping business and becoming competitors. Travelers pay their slaves wages and tolerate their eccentricities. To summarize, Travelers’ slaves are characterized as vagrant types, misfits in Gentile society, having no social group of their own."

Note from the text: "Eric Otto Winstedt reports that these same Coppersmiths “ofte nengaged an interpreter to accompany them, paying him 2s. a day. One Bohemian youth practically lived with them, and accompanied them from Liverpool to London, Glasgow, and South America” (1912-1913:283). Winstedt also complains how he himself a physician was used by the Calderari 'in the arduous task of searching for pans to beat'.

My personal insight from reading the works of nearly all social science academics claiming field work experience among ethnic minority Gypsies and Travelers in the USA (and likely everywhere) is that they allowed -- in fact invited -- their labor to be exploited by GR&T peoples in exchange for their purchase (?) of close social and spatial proximity to -- including intimacy with -- their "objects of study."

The main objective of this study is to investigate undeclared employment in Bosnia and Herzegovina, its extent, character, potential determinants and current policy approach in tackling this problem. The study relies on the existing EU literature with similar focus, typical secondary data and two primary data sources gathered through a representative survey of BiH population and in-depth interviews with state officials working on undeclared employment. The study thus provides in-depth analysis of undeclared employment in BiH and as such it aims to serve as an underpinning tool which should help to identify new set of policies needed to improve the outcome of current policy approaches to this phenomenon.
The report is structured as follows. After introductory section, the next section provides explanation of the analytical and methodological approach adopted in this study and possible policy approaches to tackle the undeclared work in practice. The following section investigates the existing literature focused on BiH, provides available estimates about undeclared economy and employment. The main contribution of this part is that we report our own investigation of undeclared employment based on primary data from BiH, including a discussion of results obtained from an empirical model, which controls for possible determinants of undeclared employment in this post-conflict society. Thus, we elaborates possible drivers of undeclared economy in BiH by investigating primary and secondary sources and relevant indicators of socio-economic, political and institutional environment. The penultimate section explains complexity of BiH institutional environment and provides the main insights about the main institutions tackling undeclared economy in BiH. The final section provides summary about the current policy approaches and measures used to tackle undeclared economy in BiH.

The aim of this report is to provide a systematic overview of the extent and nature of undeclared work, and how it is being tackled, in the EU candidate country of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The country has been classified by the World Bank as an ‘upper middle income’ country, having a GNI per capita of USD 11,159 in 2012. The
objectives of the report are to analyse the prevalence and character of undeclared work in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, to examine how the fight against undeclared work is organised, and to review relevant policy approaches
and measures adopted. Throughout the report, the situation in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is compared with the EU27 wherever feasible.

Three competing theories have been used to explain participation in the undeclared economy.
A structuralist perspective asserts that workers are pushed into undeclared work because of
their “exclusion” from the declared economy. Two alternative theoretical perspectives assert that
undeclared operators voluntarily “exit” the declared economy. Neo-liberals depict undeclared
workers as rational economic actors and institutional theorists represent them more as social
actors who disagree with the formal rules. To evaluate these competing theories in relation to
the supply of undeclared home repair and renovation services, data are reported from a 2019
Eurobarometer survey involving 27,565 face-to-face interviews in 28 European countries. The
finding is that 9.4% did so solely due to their exclusion from declared work. 19.8% participated
purely for reasons associated with the rational economic actor perspective and 28.6% only for
motives associated with the social actor perspective. 42.2% did so for a mixture of motives.
Using probit regression analysis, the characteristics of those supplying undeclared home repair
and renovation services and doing so for each rationale are revealed. The theoretical outcome is
a call to view these perspectives not as competing but complementary. The policy outcome is
to reveal the different policy initiatives required to tackle each of the rationales for supplying
undeclared home repair and renovation services.

In recent years, the view that the undeclared economy is separate from the declared economy has been transcended, not least because it has been recognised that formal employers often pay their formal employees not only an official declared salary but also an undeclared (envelope) wage so as to evade their full tax and social insurance liabilities. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the prevalence of this illegal wage practice used by formal employers to reduce their labour costs by not declaring to the authorities the full salary of their formal employees. To do this, we report the pooled results of both a 2007 and 2013 Eurobarometer dataset in order to investigate both individual-and country-level variations in under-declared employment in the European Union. The finding is that the likelihood of receiving an additional undeclared (envelope) wage is more common among employees who are men, younger employees, manual workers, people who know others engaged in undeclared work, and those living in East-Central Europe and Southern Europe. Moreover, the likelihood of this illegal wage practice is greater in countries at lower levels of economic development and with less modernised state bureaucracies, lower levels of social transfers, social protection and labour market interventions to protect vulnerable groups, and with greater severe material deprivation and inequality. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications.

To explain participation in the undeclared economy, the conventional
supply-side approach evaluates the reasons people work in this
sphere. This article, for the first time in Central and Eastern Europe,
explains the undeclared economy using a demand-side approach
which evaluates citizens’ motives for purchasing undeclared goods
and services. Here, three potential explanations for purchasing
undeclared goods and services, grounded in rational economic actor,
social actor and institutional imperfections theoretical perspectives,
are evaluated. Reporting data from 11,131 face-to-face interviews
conducted in 11 Central and Eastern European countries in 2013, the
main finding is that all three explanations are used by consumers,
demonstrating the need for a synthesis of these approaches. A
multinomial regression analysis identifies the specific groups variously
using the undeclared economy to obtain a lower price, for social or
redistributive rationales, or due to formal institutional imperfections.
The implications for theorising and tackling the undeclared economy
are then explored.

This paper introduces this special issue by providing an overview of the various policy options and approaches available for tackling enterprise in the informal economy. It firstly reviews four possible hypothetical policy options, namely doing nothing, eradicating informal sector enterprise, moving formal enterprises into the informal economy, or formalising enterprise in the informal economy. Displaying that formalising informal sector enterprise is the most viable and most commonly adopted approach, it then reviews the two approaches of using either direct controls, which increase the costs of operating informally and/or the benefits of operating formally, or indirect controls that seek greater self-regulation. Following this, the ways in which these approaches can be combined is then reviewed. The outcome is a comprehensive introductory overview and conceptual framework for contextualising the arguments of the papers in this special issue.

The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of shadow economy on the level and quality of life. It is supposed that shadow economy effects positively on the level of life (as shadow income increased total revenues). But it can impact negatively on the quality of life. The relationship between growth of life level and quality of life depends from the level of the shadow economy. To verify our hypothesis we try to compare quality of life and shadow economy indicators in different countries of the world. The empirical basis of the study based on estimation of shadow economy in different parts of the world gives Schneider, (2010) and World Bank data about GDP per capita growth, Population growth, Unemployment, Life expectancy at birth, Out-of-school rate for children. After clustering complete sample according to indicator «Shadow economy» we determine a regression equation for each cluster and for general sample. As a result of regression analysis, we found that «life expectancy at birth» is significant for each cluster and for the entire set of countries as a whole. It is noteworthy that the regression coefficient increases with the growth of the shadow economy. Our results demonstrate the correctness of the hypothesis about interrelationship between shadow economy and life quality (excluding income component).

The aim of this paper is to evaluate how to tackle the illegal wage practice where formal employers pay their formal employees an undeclared (envelope) wage in addition to their official declared salary, which reduces the tax and social contributions paid to the authorities. Until now, two competing policy approaches have been advocated, namely a conventional rational economic actor approach which seeks to increase the perceived or actual penalties and probability of being caught, and an emergent social actor approach that seeks to improve tax morale. Reporting two nationally representative surveys of employers and employees conducted in 2015 in Croatia, the finding is that just under 1 in 15 formal employees (6.6%) reported receiving an envelope wage from their formal employer, with the mean amount of their net income unreported amounting to 30%. Salary under-reporting is not always employer initiated. Employees in 30% of cases asserted it was either a joint idea or they had suggested it. To tackle salary under-reporting, logit regression analysis reveals support for the rational economic actor approach of increasing the risk of detection and the social actor approach of improving tax morality with regard employers, but only support for improving tax morale with regard to employees. The paper concludes by discussing implications for theory and policy.

The original article was published as: "Gypsy Taskmasters, Gentile Slaves."  In Matt T. Salo (ed.). The American Kalderas: Gypsies and the New World., pp. 29-41. Hackettstown, NY: Gypsy Lore Society, 1981.
~
This version is republished as Chapter Five in:  The Gypsy-American: An Ethnogeographic Study. 2002. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.
~
Abstract: "This chapter features Gypsy taskmasters, and certain non-Gypsies in
subservient roles, whom I will refer to as “Gentiles” due to their marked social distance from the Gypsies. I will lump the subservient Gentiles together in this discussion as “slaves” not only for effect, but because the English Gypsy scholar Thomas Acton reports (1974:75) such people are actually called “slaves” when they are sought out and employed as blacktoppers [tarmacers?] by Irish Travelers. Paraphrasing Acton, Irish Travelers recruit their slaves from skid row flophouses. Examples of Travelers’ slaves include an ex-sailor with a speech defect, and a mental defective. Acton supposes such people are very grateful to sleep in the back of a van and usually incapable of learning the blacktopping business and becoming competitors. Travelers pay their slaves wages and tolerate their eccentricities. To summarize, Travelers’ slaves are characterized as vagrant types, misfits in Gentile society, having no social group of their own."

Subsequent note (4/1/2020): My personal insight from reading the works of nearly all social science academics claiming field work experience among ethnic minority Gypsies and Travelers in the USA (and likely everywhere) is that they allowed -- in fact invited -- their labor to be exploited by GR&T peoples in exchange for their purchase of close social and spatial proximity to -- including intimacy with -- their "objects of study." An entire book could be written … .

Recognizing that the current conceptualizations of men’s and women’s undeclared work derive almost entirely from a limited range of small-scale studies of specific localities, sectors and occupations, this article begins to resolve this dearth of evidence by reporting the findings of an extensive
cross-national survey of undeclared work conducted in 2007 across 27 European Union (EU) nations. The outcome is fresh and extensive EU-wide evidence that extends existing conceptualizations of the gender differences in terms of participation, sector, contract type and pay. However, the
recognition that undeclared work is conducted for closer social relations and sometimes for motives other than financial gain, is shown to apply not only to women, as previously contended, but to men as well and to constitute
most of the undeclared work in the EU. The result is a call for a fundamental reconceptualization of the nature of undeclared work that recognizes the heterogeneous work relations involved.

This study empirically investigates the extent of non compliance with the tax code and the determinants of federal income tax evasion in the U.S. Employing the most recent data we find that 18-19% of total reportable income is not properly reported to the IRS, giving rise to a “tax gap” approaching $500 billion dollars. Three time periods are studied, 1960-2008, 1970-2008, and 1980-2008. It is found across study periods that income tax evasion is an increasing function of the average effective federal income tax rate, the unemployment rate, public dissatisfaction with government, and per capita real GDP (adopted as a measure of income), and a decreasing function of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (during its first two years of being implemented). Modest evidence of a negative impact of IRS audit rates on tax evasion is also detected.

Keywords: Underground economy; unreported economy; tax evasion; tax gap; non compliance; Federal income tax.

JEL Classifications: E26; H26; O17; E41; E52

On 19th April 2021, the Western Balkan Network Tackling Undeclared Work held an online seminar that brought together representatives from enforcement authorities and social partners. The intention was to discuss and share understanding of the major challenges they face in pursuing greater cooperation and provide tips for other Western Balkan economies on how these challenges might be addressed. It was also an opportunity to explore the scope for greater cooperation and to share learning on the type of initiatives that social partners can pursue to protect legitimate businesses and workers by transforming undeclared work into declared work.
Around 40 participants from the Ministries of Labour, Labour Inspectorates, Tax Authorities and social partners (representatives of trade unions and employers’ associations) across the Western Balkans exchanged views and contributed to peer learning by answering the key discussion topics: identifying major challenges in developing greater cooperation; ways to improve the cooperation between social partners and authorities; and naming practical steps that could be undertaken to improve cooperation.
The aim of this learning resource is to summarise the discussion at the seminar. To do so, section 2 reports the discussion on the scope for greater cooperation between enforcement authorities and social partners, section 3 reports the discussion on the types of initiatives in which social partners could become more involved and section 4 the next steps that can be taken.

Effective cross-border inspections require national
and EU-wide support. Given the current challenges to
organise cross border inspections, this toolkit2 offers
guidance on how to prepare, implement, and follow up
effective cross-border inspections to ensure that EU rules
on labour mobility are enforced fairly, coherently and
effectively

The Montenegrin labour market is characterized by low activity of the working age population, relatively high unemployment, particularly among the young, wide spread undeclared work and the lack of a sufficient number of new and quality jobs. Volume of undeclared work in Montenegro is significant, amounting to one third of total employment. The key purpose of this policy paper is to provide insight into the scope of the undeclared economy in Montenegro, to describe the policy measures implemented in order to tackle undeclared economy and their effectiveness. This involved both desk-based research and interviews with institutions involved in tackling the undeclared economy.

To advance understanding of informal sector entrepreneurship, the aim of this paper is to evaluate and explain the cross-country variations in the prevalence of informal sector competitors. To do so, World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data is reported from 142 countries. This reveals that 27% of formal enterprises view competition from the
informal sector as a major constraint on their operations, although this varies from 72% of formal enterprises in Chad to no formal enterprises in El Salvador. To explain these crosscountry variations, four competing theories are evaluated which variously view informal sector entrepreneurship and enterprise to be more prevalent when there is either: economic under-development (modernisation theory); high taxes and state over-interference (neoliberal theory); too little state intervention (political economy theory), or an asymmetry between the laws and regulations of formal institutions and the unwritten socially shared rules of informal institutions (institutional theory). A multilevel probit regression analysis confirms the modernisation and institutional theories, but not the neo-liberal and political theories. Beyond economic under-development, therefore, it is not too much or too little state intervention that is associated with the prevalence of informal sector competition but rather, whether the laws and regulations developed by governments are in symmetry with the norms, values and beliefs of entrepreneurs. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.