STATISTICAL ESTIMATION OF UNOBSERVED ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

Abstract

The article researches methods of measuring unobserved economy. The methods being analyzed are based on statistics of households, the method of factual employment, expert method, etc. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages and unfortunately cannot provide full characteristics of unobserved economy indicators. The author comes to the conclusion about the necessity to develop a common methodology for assessing shadow economy in order to come closer to the exact estimation of GDP and other macro-economic figures, to find the concealed share of the real sector of economy and to identify the scale of country 'shadowing'. True information about the shadow share of economy can help to take measures to normalize Russian economy.

Keywords

• informal economy
• shadow economy
• households
• macro-economic figures
• unregistered economic activity
• pre-estimated parameters
• methods of estimating unobserved economy
• criteria of data trustworthiness