The Dynamics of Moonlighting in Russia : What is Happening in the Russian Informal Economy?

This paper uses the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to analyse the dynamics of moonlighting by the working-age population. We find that moonlighting is transitory and that a desire to switch jobs expressed in the past is positively related to moonlighting in the present and to actual job changes in the future. We also find that workers who moonlighted as self-employed in the past represent 26.5 percent of the new self-employed. These results suggest that moonlighting in Russia can be seen as an effective incubator for setting up new self-employed businesses, thereby providing long-term benefits for the economy