فرار مالیاتی، اقتصاد زیرزمینی و توسعه مالی

We study the relationship between the underground economy and financial development in a model of tax evasion and bank intermediation. Agents with heterogeneous skills seek loans in order to undertake risky investment projects. Asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders implies a menu of loan contracts that induce self-selection in a separating equilibrium. Faced with these contracts, agents choose how much of their income to declare by trading off their incentives to offer collateral against their disincentives to comply with tax obligations. The key implication of the analysis is that the marginal net benefit of income disclosure increases with the level of financial development. Thus, in accordance with empirical observation, we establish the result that the lower is the stage of such development, the higher is the incidence of tax evasion and the greater is the size of the underground economy.

The underground economy is a pervasive feature of countries throughout the world. In one form or another, and to a lesser or greater degree, it has existed, and continues to exist, in all societies. Known by many other names (e.g., the hidden, shadow, unofficial, informal and black market economy), its effects on economic and social development can be significant and far-reaching as scarce resources are wasted or used inefficiently, as purposeful regulations are circumvented and undermined, as national accounts become inaccurate and incomplete, and as public finances deteriorate to the detriment of public policy. Of course, the presence of an underground sector is simply a reflection of individuals’ incentives to conceal their economic activities, either because these activities would be less rewarding if practised in the formal sector, or else because the activities are illegal to begin with. Understanding what factors might influence such incentives is an important avenue of research which we pursue in this paper.1

The existence of a shadow economy has potentially serious implications for economic performance and public policy. Activities conducted in this sector are neither protected nor regulated in the same way that applies to activities in the formal sector. Growth prospects can be compromised by encumbrances to doing business due to the lack of social infrastructure. Public finances can suffer as the tax base shrinks, thus weakening the government's capacity to generate revenue. And policy makers’ assessments and recommendations can be prone to greater error because of the poorer quality of official statistics. For these and other reasons, the size of the informal sector is a matter of non-trivial concern and an important task is to understand what factors might influence it.