Source: Agência Brasil, 14/05/2009

Rio - The Brazilian Institute of Economics (Ibre) of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), and the Brazilian Institute of Competition Ethics (Etco) today release (14) the Underground Economy Index. It will be at 11 am, during a press conference at the institution's headquarters in Rio.

The economics professor and researcher Fernando de Holanda Barbosa Filho will present the data, as well as the numbers from the historical series of the index as of March 2003. Also participating in the conference are Etco's executive president, André Franco Montoro Filho, the director of Ibre Luiz Guilherme Schymura and the head of the institution's Economic Growth Center, Samuel de Abreu Pessoa.

In addition to measuring the behavior of the underground economy, the new index makes it possible to identify the various variables that affect it, indicating ways to develop public policies that create mechanisms to incorporate informality into the formal economy. Factors such as tax burden, excessive bureaucracy and corruption stimulate the underground economy.