This paper contributes to the literature in an attempt to understand the determinants of the informal economy by investigating the relationship between financial development and the size of the informal economy using an unbalanced panel data of 41 sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1991–2015. The paper applies different techniques such as ordinary least squares, fixed effects, system generalized method of moments, and quantile regression. The results show that financial development and its square are important determinants of the informal economy in SSA. Across a number of specifications, we find that financial development reduces the size of the informal economy and that there is a U‐shaped relationship between financial development and the informal economy.

中文翻译：

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金融发展是否会减少撒哈拉以南非洲国家非正规经济的规模？

本文通过使用1991年以来撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）41个国家的不平衡面板数据，调查了金融发展与非正规经济规模之间的关系，从而为理解非正规经济的决定因素做出了贡献。 –2015年。本文采用了不同的技术，例如普通最小二乘法，固定效应，系统广义矩量法和分位数回归。结果表明，金融发展及其平方是撒哈拉以南非洲非正规经济的重要决定因素。在许多规范中，我们发现金融发展减小了非正规经济的规模，并且金融发展与非正规经济之间存在U型关系。