Size, Causes and Consequences of the Underground Economy

Chapter 6On the Estimation and Updating of the Hidden Economy Estimates: The UK Experience

Dilip Bhattacharyya

Introduction

For many years a number of Economists emphasized the importance of the estimates of the ‘hidden economy’ in managing and understanding the working of the modern economies. All available evidences suggest that a substantial part of the economic activities remain unrecorded in the national income statistics. This message is also clear from the recent survey by Schneider and Enste (2000). Although many researchers produced estimates of unrecorded component of the national income under different names, these estimates are rarely used in other economic research or in economic management. A list of typical criticism against these ...