Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/243017 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2114
Publisher: 
Koç University-TÜSIAD Economic Research Forum (ERF), Istanbul
Abstract: 
This paper introduces a comprehensive database of informal economic activity. The database focuses on measures that have strong cross-country and over time coverage: it includes both model-based and survey-based measures of informality and covers more than 160 economies for the period 1990-2018. The paper illustrates two applications of the database. First, it distills stylized facts of informal activity, including its declining trend and pervasiveness in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). Second, it documents the cyclical features of the informal economy. Overall, informal economy recessions (recoveries) do not differ significantly from those of formal economy. Like formal-economy business cycles, informal-economy business cycles tend to be shallower in advanced economies than in EMDEs. Informal employment in both advanced economies and EMDEs appears to be largely acyclical
Subjects: 
Informal economy
self-employment
employment
output
business cycles
JEL: 
E26
E32
J46
O17
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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