IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cjsbxx/v18y2016i1p90-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond a Deterrence Approach towards the Undeclared Economy: Some Lessons from Bulgaria

Author

Listed:
  • Colin C. Williams
  • Josip Franic

Abstract

Until now, the undeclared economy has been tackled in Balkan countries by increasing the penalties and risk of detection so as to deter participation. Recently however, calls have been made for a new more indirect approach that improves tax morale in order to foster a culture of commitment to compliance. The aim of this paper is to evaluate these contrasting policy approaches. Reporting evidence from 1018 face-to-face interviews conducted in Bulgaria during 2013, logistic regression analysis reveals no association between participation in undeclared work and the perceived level of penalties and risk of detection, but a strong association between participation in undeclared work and the level of tax morale. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of the findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Colin C. Williams & Josip Franic, 2016. "Beyond a Deterrence Approach towards the Undeclared Economy: Some Lessons from Bulgaria," Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 90-106, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cjsbxx:v:18:y:2016:i:1:p:90-106
    DOI: 10.1080/19448953.2015.1094269
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19448953.2015.1094269
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/19448953.2015.1094269?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Colin C. Williams, 2023. "A Modern Guide to the Informal Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 18668.
    2. Ioana Alexandra Horodnic & Colin C. Williams & Adriana Manolică & Cristina Teodora Roman & Gabriela Boldureanu, 2023. "Employer perspectives on undeclared work in the service sector: impacts and policy responses," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(5-6), pages 358-377, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cjsbxx:v:18:y:2016:i:1:p:90-106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cjsb .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.