Greece and its informal economy à l'égyptienne

Greeks are getting in touch with their inner Egyptians: The informal economy in Greece is growing as businesses that can’t afford to pay newly imposed taxes deregister in Greece to work in the parallel economy, often after registering abroad in lower-tax environments, Liz Alderman writes for The New York Times. Ring a bell? “Few problems are more ingrained, or harder to combat, than the shadow economy, which appears to be growing again as new austerity measures compel once law-abiding Greeks to go off the books,” writes Alderman. It’s not bad time to revisit the Financial Times’ “Egypt: World Bank sees widening of ‘shadow’ economy” from back in 2014, which makes the point that two of every five jobs in Egypt are in the informal economy.