The Effect of Corruption on Shadow Economy: An Empirical Analysis Based on Panel Data

Quite often shadow economy (SE) and corruption are seen as "twins", which need each other or fight against each other and theoretically can be either complements or substitutes. Therefore, the relationship between SE and corruption has been a controversial and polemical issue and in the spotlight of a remarkable collection of economists and social researchers. The main objective of this study can be served as an investigation and identification of the effect of corruption on SE and its dependence on the level of development. To test our two hypothesis , the econometric panel-data approach is employed for  the period of 1999 to 2007 in two blocks of 25 countries containing  high-developed and developing  countries (including I.R.IRAN) under deferent indexes for corruption in the context of Static and Dynamic  panel regression models(by using of 2SLS and GMM methods of estimation). The results of estimations specially based on dynamic panel models indicate that our two hypotheses cannot be rejected and corruption has a significant effect on SE depending on the level of development. Despite of these findings, our results show that there is no robust relationship between corruption and the size of the SE in terms of the sign and the nature of these effects. In other words, the relationship will vary according to different corruption indexes and estimation methods. Other findings have been described in the terminal sector of paper.