Why Do Firms Hide? Bribes and Unofficial Activity after Communism
Conference Paper, The Nobel Symposium in Economics - The Economics of Transition, Stockholm, September 1999
Posted: 19 Nov 1999
There are 2 versions of this paper
Why Do Firms Hide? Bribes and Unofficial Activity after Communism
Date Written: June 1999
Abstract
Our survey of private manufacturing firms finds the size of hidden "unofficial" activity to be much larger in Russia and Ukraine than in Poland, Slovakia and Romania. A comparison of cross-country averages shows that managers in Russia and Ukraine face higher effective tax rates, worse bureaucratic corruption, greater incidence of mafia protection, and have less faith in the court system. Our firm-level regressions for the three Eastern European countries find that bureaucratic corruption is significantly associated with hiding output.
JEL Classification: H19, H26
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation