Relationship Between Unemployment Rate and Shadow Economy in Nigeria: A Tado-Yamamoto Approach

Abstract

This study assessed the nature of the relationship between the size of the shadow economy and unemployment rate in Nigeria using the Tado-Yamamoto approach over the period 1980Q1 to 2018Q4. The size of the shadow economy in Nigeria was determined using the parsimonious model of MIMIC (4-1-2) having four multiple causes (tax burden, self-employment, social benefits paid by the government and unemployment rate) and two indicators (index of real Gross Domestic Product and currency ratio (M1/M2)). The estimated relationship of the size of shadow economy as percentage of official GDP recorded 13.78% at the beginning of the first quarter of 1980 before fluctuating to 8.23% in the third quarter of 2009. The existence of a strong and positive association between the unemployment rate and shadow economy is affirmed by the estimated coefficient of determination (0.89) which confirmed the capacity of the shadow economy to absorb the unemployed workers from the official economy in Nigeria. Evidence exists from the Tado and Yamamoto (1995) causality test which revealed a causal relationship emanating from unemployment rate to the size of shadow economy. This was confirmed by the Modified Wald (MWald) test which demonstrated that a strong unidirectional causality running from unemployment rate to the size of shadow economy exists at 1% level of significance.