Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Undeclared work represents a persistent feature of contemporary economies and results in lost public revenue, lack of worker protection and unfair competition for legitimate businesses. Conventionally, undeclared work has been viewed as an individual criminal act, which is solved by governments increasing the penalties and risks of detection in order to discourage participation. This, however, only deals with the outcome (i.e., participation in undeclared work) and does not address the drivers of this behaviour.

This report explores the formal institutional failures which make undeclared work an acceptable behaviour in the eyes of citizens and, consequently, result in high participation in …