Estimating the size of the shadow economy in Poland

The shadow economy, as an interdisciplinary phenomenon, generates many controversies and difficulties for researchers. Economic entities operating within the non-observed (hidden) economy strive to escape official records, therefore a direct estimation of the extent of the phenomenon remains unobtainable. The aim of this article is to present the results of the estimation of the size of the shadow economy in Poland on the basis of the differences between GDP calculated according to the ‘production’ and the ‘expenditure’ approaches. The authors propose an original technique based on the idea of residual methods. In the course of the study, two models describing the dependencies between the growth of GDP and the growth of indicators used in the in the above-mentioned approaches to GDP calculation were established. The identified differences between the value of this measure calculated according to the production and expenditure approaches were used for the estimation of the size of the shadow economy in Poland, presented as a share in GDP. The analysis was carried out on the basis of panel data reflecting the values of selected macroeconomic indicators measured on the voivodship scale in the years 2000–2017, drawn from the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland. The obtained results resemble to a large extent the estimates of the shadow economy by Statistics Poland and EY, and also partly that by United Nations Global Compact. The analysis presented in the paper is part of the research conducted by the Centre for Non-Observed Economy Srudies (OGN) at the Statistical Office in Kielce, whose aim is to improve the methodology currently used by official statistics in Poland.