The Effect of Public Education Expenditure on Shadow Economy: A Cross-Country Analysis

This paper empirically examines whether devoting more resources to education can reduce the size of the shadow economy on a cross-section of countries. The findings show a negative relationship between public education expenditure and the size of the shadow economy, which is robust to the inclusion of different proxies for the control variables, a large set of policy variables, regional differences and endogeneity. The findings also emphasize the role of education, suggesting that public policies devoted to higher education level imply a decreasing effect on the shadow economy.