Wage under-reporting (or under-declared employment) occurs when a formal employer pays a formal employee an official declared wage but also an additional undeclared (“envelope”) wage. Given that employers often give this undeclared part of the wage to the employee as cash in an envelope, the...

The aim of this policy brief is to investigate the factors influencing participation in envelope wage arrangements and to explore the policy measures more prone to producing effective results in tackling this form of undeclared work

To evaluate the prevalence in Eastern Europe of a little discussed illegitimate wage practice in which employers pay their formal employees both a declared wage and an undeclared ‘envelope wage’, an extensive survey involving 10,671 face-to-face interviews in eleven post-socialist societies...