Shadow Economy, Corruption, and Economic Growth: An Empirical Analysis

There is considerable debate over the effects of both corruption and shadow economy on growth, but few studies have considered how the interaction between them might affect economic growth. We study how corruption levels in public administration affect economic growth and how this effect depends on the shadow economy. Using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), fixed effects, and system generalized method of moments (GMM) on a dataset of 34 OECD countries over the period 1995-2014. The estimation results indicate that increased corruption and a larger shadow economy lead to decrease in economic growth. Results additionally indicate that the shadow economy magnifies the effect of corruption on economic growth. These results imply significant complementarities between corruption and the shadow economy, suggesting that the reduction of corruption will lead to a fall in the size of the shadow economy and will also reduce the negative effects of corruption on economic growth through the underground economy.