Study On The Underground Economy In China

This thesis is basically concerned with Underground Economy, an area that remains to be fully understood but has attached increasing attention. Underground Economy is so omnipresent in our economic life that smuggling, prostitution, unlicensed business, unregistered employment and tax gap are all parts of it. And all these activities are trying to escape government regulation by every possible means. As a result, Underground Economy is beyond the supervision of current official statistics.Early in 1970's, both governments and economists of main western countries had paid a great deal of attention to the study of Underground Economy. And by now they have achieved a lot in the measurement of Underground Economy.Since 1980, Chinese Underground Economy has greatly expanded and has damaged almost every aspect of our life in varying degrees. For the good of resources allocation efficiency and economic development, we should strengthen the study of the measurement of Underground Economy, analyze its originalities and see through its manifestations to grasp the mechanism of its existence and development. Only after we have done these can we profoundly understand the development of economy, adopt feasible countermeasures to Underground Economy and then advance our socialist market economy.As a special economic field, Underground Economy has not been comprehensively understood and the study of it is still tentative. First of all, the thesis makes an overall evaluation on the traditional definition, and then advances a new and relatively more accurate definition of Underground Economy. From the income point of view, Underground Economy is divided into two parts: unreported economy and criminal economy. Second, the thesis carefully investigates Underground Economy's manifestations and sums up Underground Economy's most important characteristics.