Informal Markets, Domestic Production and Demand Elasticities: A Case of Study for Turkey
Résumé
In this article, the size of informal economy is measured using an estimation of demand system including both
monetary incomes and incomes from domestic production based on cross-sectional data covering 2003–2006 period in
Turkey. Combining these two sources of income allows the computation of proxies of full prices at the individual
level. The estimation of this demand system including resources from domestic production increases significantly the
evaluated size of informal economy by one third. The full price elasticities estimated with respect to these proxies can
be decomposed into time and monetary components. Estimates of the elasticities with respect to monetary prices and
time-costs are significantly negative for all types of expenditures, so that economic policies can be efficiently applied to
a taxation of monetary values using the estimates of those elasticities over sub-populations rather than elasticities
computed on macro-data. Time-cost elasticities are shown to be larger in absolute value than their monetary price
counter-part while for income effects the time-ressource elasticities are lower in absolute value than the monetary
income ones. These results are important for public policy concerning informal work, showing a large difference in the
substitution effect between time and money among household participating or not participating in informal activities.