Estimating the Probability of Moonlighting in Italian Building Industry

Abstract

It’s well known that black market economy and especially undeclared work undermines the financing of national social security programs and hinders efforts to boost economic growth. This paper goes in the direction of shedding light on the phenomenon by using statistical models to detect which companies are more likely to hire off the books workers. We used database from different administrative sources and link them together in order to have an informative system able to capture all aspects of firms activity. Afterward we used both parametric and non parametric models to estimate the probability of a firm to use moonlighters. We have chosen to study building industry both because of its importance in the economy of a country and because its a wide spread problem in that sector