One Share Fits All? Regional Variations in the Extent of the Shadow Economy in Europe

The methodology of digital shadow economy estimation

“…With reference to Schneider and Buehn (2013), Schneider and Williams (2015) and Schneider et al (2013), the activities of informal sector cover trade, transport, agriculture, construction, repair and renovation of dwellings, repair of motor vehicles and household appliances, private lessons and other personal services. According to Juškienė (2015), the sources used to obtain the data about the scopes of activities in informal sector include HBS, LFS, special purpose surveys, opinion polls, tax and other administrative data.…”

“…internet, radio, TV, newspapers), experts' estimates and assumptions (Juškienė, 2015). With reference to OECD (2002) and Juškienė (2015), estimations are made not only for non-declared productive activities, but also for illegal activities, for instance, illegal production, import, sales, consumption of illegal drugs, prostitution, trade in illegally produced audio and video products, theft, smuggling, etc.…”

“…internet, radio, TV, newspapers), experts' estimates and assumptions (Juškienė, 2015). With reference to OECD (2002) and Juškienė (2015), estimations are made not only for non-declared productive activities, but also for illegal activities, for instance, illegal production, import, sales, consumption of illegal drugs, prostitution, trade in illegally produced audio and video products, theft, smuggling, etc. Due to the diffi culties of measurement, in many cases, the approximate estimates of illegal activities can be regarded only as indicative rather than accurate (Juškienė, 2015;OECD Statistics, 2002;UNECE, 2003).…”

“…With reference to OECD (2002) and Juškienė (2015), estimations are made not only for non-declared productive activities, but also for illegal activities, for instance, illegal production, import, sales, consumption of illegal drugs, prostitution, trade in illegally produced audio and video products, theft, smuggling, etc. Due to the diffi culties of measurement, in many cases, the approximate estimates of illegal activities can be regarded only as indicative rather than accurate (Juškienė, 2015;OECD Statistics, 2002;UNECE, 2003). With reference OECD (2002), only fi ve EU Member-States include the estimates of illegal economy in their published estimates of GDP: Bulgaria -the estimates of drug consumption, Czech Republic -the estimates of prostitution and sales of stolen goods, Estonia -the estimates of prostitution, trade in drugs and audio-video products, Slovakia -the estimates of traffi cking, distribution of drugs and prostitution, and the UK -the estimations of smuggled alcohol drinks and tobacco products.…”

“…Yet the methodologies that would allow to consider the indicators of digital shadow economy have not been developed. Hence, the real size of digital shadow economy remains unestimated, and the perception of how the problems of digital shadow economy can be dealt with remains relatively vague (Holt et al, 2010;Mayayise & Olusegun Osunmakinde, 2014). For the reasons explicated above, the development of the methodology that would incorporate the indicators of digital shadow economy could enable to estimate more accurate scopes of the overall shadow economy, and could supplement currently available methodologies of traditional shadow economy estimation.…”