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Essays In Macroeconomics Of Emerging Markets, Miguel Acosta Henao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1. Law enforcement and the size of the informal sector.

I assemble new cross-country evidence showing that contrary to the standard view, the relationship between the size of the informal sector and tax rates is, at best, ambiguous. Law enforcement and informality also show no clear relation. Motivated by these findings, I augment a standard two-sector (formal and informal) small open economy model with endogenous law enforcement that depends on the size of the informal sector (measured by its assets) and government expenditure. I use a micro-dataset from Colombia to show that both taxes and law enforcement are necessary …