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THE MONETARY METHOD AND THE SIZE OF THE SHADOW ECONOMY: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT
Author(s) -
Ahumada Hildegart,
Alvaredo Facundo,
Canavese Alfredo
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2007.00234.x
Subject(s) - economics , currency , shadow (psychology) , monetary economics , demand for money , circulation (fluid dynamics) , macroeconomics , income elasticity of demand , measure (data warehouse) , economy , monetary policy , econometrics , psychology , physics , database , computer science , psychotherapist , thermodynamics
A widely applied approach to measure the size of the shadow economy, known as the “monetary method” or the “currency approach,” is based on econometric estimates of the demand for money. These estimates are used to get the currency held by economic agents in excess of the amount they need to finance registered transactions. This excess of currency multiplied by the income‐velocity of circulation (assumed to be equal in the registered and shadow economies) gives a measure of the hidden GDP. This paper shows that the monetary method only produces coherent estimates if the income‐elasticity of the demand for currency is one and suggests a way to correct the estimated size of the shadow economy when such elasticity is not one. The correction is applied to existent measures for different countries.