Abstract:
In this paper we study the interrelationship between growth, size of the informal economy and inflation. We build an endogenous growth model in which the informal economy is subject to a cash-in-advance constraint along with physical capital and consumption. In this setting, we find that inflation adversely affects long-term growth. However; this effect strongly interacts with informality. Specifically, it becomes milder (and can even be positive) in the presence of a large informal economy. Moreover, using an annual cross-country panel data set of 161 countries over the period 1950 – 2009, we also provide strong empirical support for the mechanism of our theory.
