ABSTRACT
Effective regulation of the labour market depends to a large extent on the quality of public administration. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the problem of unemployment in regions, which led to the spread of the shadow economy. The article aims to research the relationship between the unemployment rate and the shadow economy in Lithuanian regions over the period 2000-2019, to reveal the regional disparities in terms of the above-mentioned economic variables and submit recommendations to municipal authorities on how to reduce the strength of the relationship under consideration. Pearson and MCD correlation coefficients revealed that the relationship between the unemployment rate and the shadow economy is negative in all Lithuanian regions. An increase/decrease in the unemployment rate leads to a decrease/increase in the size of the shadow economy. The hypothesis proposing that “the municipalities with a high unemployment rate tend to have a stronger relationship with the size of the shadow economy” was only partly confirmed. The strongest relationships between the unemployment rate and the size of the shadow economy were found in Visaginas and Marijampolė municipalities, meanwhile only the calculated median values indicated that the unemployment rate in Visaginas amounted to 11.8 percent, and in Marijampolė – to 11.2 percent over the period under consideration. The two above-mentioned municipalities are among the municipalities with the highest unemployment rate, but lag behind Lazdynai (15 percent), Ignalina (14.9 percent.), Kalvarija (14.6 percent), Akmenė (14.5 percent), Jurbarkas (14 percent), and Zarasai (14 percent) municipalities. Considering the results, cooperation between the Employment Service and Lithuanian municipalities should be improved with a view to identifying whether a person registered with the Employment Service has applied to a municipality for social support;the State Labour Inspectorate, the Employment Service and the State Tax Inspectorate should also improve their cooperation to establish the principles for exchange of the data on the activities of the labour force assigned to risk groups. © 2022, Bucharest University of Economic Studies Publishing House. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
We investigate the relationship between digitalization and the shadow economy in 42 African countries using unbalanced panel data from 2003 to 2016. We begin by drawing on modernization theory to hypothesize that digitalization efforts in African economies represent an augmentation of public service delivery as well as a channel through which the size of the continent's informal economic activity might be reduced. We employ the fixed effects estimation technique as its baseline estimator while correcting for potential endogeneity concerns using an instrumental variable two-stage least squares technique. We show compelling evidence that digitalization is associated with a decrease in the size of the shadow economy in Africa. However, evidence of a larger influence is driven by the availability of telecommunications infrastructure and the expansion of government online services. These findings suggest that policymakers should invest more in digital technology to formalize Africa's hidden economic activity, particularly to fill the post-COVID-19 financing gap. © 2022 African Development Bank.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we use a novel cross-country dataset to investigate the relationship between the prevalence of the shadow economy and fiscal policy responses to the economic crisis induced by the pandemic. The finding is that countries with a relatively larger shadow economy before the pandemic have adopted a smaller fiscal policy package. The results are robust to different econometric specifications, including an instrumental variable estimation. This reinforces the wider literature that countries (especially those with larger shadow economies) generally follow a procyclical policy as opposed to the optimal and countercyclical one.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study is to explore the shadow economy of violent extremism through charity lenses and factors associated with misuse of charitable giving in a global financial system. It reviews the emergency response situations like COVID-19 when financial needs are urgent with lacked monitoring and control over payment disbursement to vulnerable groups. It highlights several governments' significant steps to counter the illicit finance flow through 'public-face' charity organizations. Descriptive research was used to gather secondary data insights using published reports, articles, news portals, and policy briefs from renowned institutions. The findings depict four factors known as economic and capacity, socio-cultural, politico-legal, and global networks support in misuse of charitable giving to finance violent extremism. This study claims not all charitable giving misused for extremism and violence. However, there is a possibility that extremist groups could take advantage of using humanitarian organizations' face to finance violent extremism. Two possible recommendations have been made to overcome this issue by adopting digital payment mechanisms and community engagement to design and deliver the COVID-19 response recovery programs.
ABSTRACT
This research analyses the impact of changes and the formation of economic regulations in healthcare in the implementation of antique policies, as a factor in the reproduction of the shadow economy from the position of a structural and reproducible approach to the analysis of the shadow economy. The violation of the established system of control relations in the field of health care in the context of the implementation of an anti-criminal policy, manifested in the transformation of existing and the formation of new economic regulations, should change the structure and volume of the shadow economy in this area. In our opinion, not to see and not to notice the objective trends of the structural and reproducible dynamics of the shadow economy depending on anti-Covid measures is an inexcusable omission of modern scientists of economists, because the transformation of existing and the formation of new economic regulations in the field of health care can help to visualize the world of shadow economic relations with its inherent contradictions and inherent internal logic of development. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the demand for goods and services worldwide. The combination of a public health emergency, economic distress, and misinformation-driven panic have pushed customers and vendors towards the shadow economy. In particular, dark web marketplaces (DWMs), commercial websites accessible via free software, have gained significant popularity. Here, we analyse 851,199 listings extracted from 30 DWMs between January 1, 2020 and November 16, 2020. We identify 788 listings directly related to COVID-19 products and monitor the temporal evolution of product categories including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), medicines (e.g., hydroxyclorochine), and medical frauds. Finally, we compare trends in their temporal evolution with variations in public attention, as measured by Twitter posts and Wikipedia page visits. We reveal how the online shadow economy has evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight the importance of a continuous monitoring of DWMs, especially now that real vaccines are available and in short supply. We anticipate our analysis will be of interest both to researchers and public agencies focused on the protection of public health.