Does the tax undermine the effect of remittances on shadow economy?

There are considerable studies regarding the contribution of international migrants’ remittances to economic growth while there is a lack of studies which investigate the effect of remittances on shadow economy. The authors explore empirically the effect of remittances and its interaction effect with tax on shadow economy by using panel data covering the period 2004–2015 and applying the GMM method for 141 countries. Their empirical model, in which a remittance-recipient government, operating in tax environment of some regimes (imposition of different levels and kinds of taxes), predicts a negative effect of remittances on shadow economy, is mitigated by a higher tax regime. In other words, the paper argues that a well-established negative correlation between remittances and shadow economy has been weakened by tax rule. The study contributes to the current literature on public policy that gives importance to know the causes of shadow economy and boost remittances effect. The authors´ baseline results are robust to various computations of macroeconomics variables, institutions variables and freedom variables.

现有大量研究聚焦于国际移民汇款对经济增长的贡献，但针对汇款对影子经济（shadow economy）影响的探讨却较为匮乏。本文作者基于覆盖2004-2015年的面板数据，针对141个国家采用广义矩估计（Generalized Method of Moments，GMM）方法，实证检验了汇款的影响及其与税收的交互效应对影子经济的作用。在本文构建的实证模型中，处于不同税收制度（即征收不同水平、不同类型税收）环境下的汇款接收国政府，其模型预测汇款对影子经济存在负向影响，但该负向影响会被更高强度的税收制度所削弱。换言之，本文提出，学界已普遍证实的汇款与影子经济间的负相关关系，会因税收规则的存在而被弱化。本研究对当前公共政策相关文献具有补充价值：此类文献均重视探究影子经济的成因，并希望有效强化汇款的积极作用。本文作者得到的基准回归结果，在采用不同方式测算宏观经济变量、制度变量以及自由度变量的情形下依然保持稳健。