Macroeconomic time series and the monetary aggregates approach to estimating the underground economy

This paper examines the monetary aggregates approach to estimating the size of the underground economy. It is shown that estimates of the size of the underground economy using Canadian data may not be robust, as the time series properties of these aggregates are often inconsistent with simple ordinary least squares regression. Correcting for the problem, usually by first differencing the data, may yield overstated or inappropriate estimates of the size of the underground economy.