Publications by PSE researchers

This paper offers a new approach to measuring the size of the informal economy based on VAT data for the European Union. Although data intensive, our evading value added duty economy (EVADE) measure is simpler and more transparent than existing measures. EVADE also shows more variation across countries of Europe than earlier measures, including higher informality in Greece, Italy, and Spain, for example. Moreover, we find considerably higher variation within countries across time; in a cross-country time series regression, controlling for tax rates, we confirm that the informal economy grows significantly in recessions and decreases in booms, which we term the “Hugo effect”.

This paper examines the exchange rate policy in a tractable framework with heterogeneous firms, incomplete financial markets and nominal rigidities. External demand shocks generate exchange rate movements leading to uncertainty in the labor demand of exporter firms. When exporter firms are homogeneous in terms of productivity, a monetary policy response to external demand shocks stabilizes the export market and improves welfare, thus providing a rationale for managed exchange rate policies.

The literature on tax compliance has focused on its level but little is known about its dynamics. This paper shows that fluctuations in tax compliance are driven by changes in the state of the economy and the response of tax compliance to them. Tax compliance is markedly volatile and there are large differences in such volatility across countries. A large fraction of these differences (about 70%) is explained by different responses of tax compliance to tax changes and output fluctuations.

The effect of fiscal policy on default risk is mitigated by the response of tax compliance. To explore the consequences of this stylized fact, we build a model of sovereign debt with limited commitment and imperfect tax enforcement. Fiscal policy persistently affects the size of the informal economy, which impacts future fiscal revenues and default risk. The interaction of imperfect tax enforcement and limited commitment strongly constrains the dynamics of optimal fiscal policy and leads to costly uctuations in consumption.