Evaluating policy approaches towards undeclared work : some lessons from FYR Macedonia

To tackle undeclared work, the conventional rational economic actor approach uses deterrents to ensure that the costs of engaging in undeclared work outweigh the benefits. Recent years has seen the emergence of a social actor approach which focuses upon improving tax morale. To analyse the association between participation in undeclared work and these policy approaches, 2,014 face-to-face interviews conducted in FYROM in 2015 are reported. Logistic regression analysis reveals no association between participation in undeclared work and the perceived level of penalties and risk of detection, but there is an association with the level of tax morale. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for theory and policy.