Business Cycles, Informal Economy, and Interest Rates in Emerging Countries

Abstract

This paper recognizes the importance of a large informal economy and interest rate fluctuations for business cycles in emerging countries. I document (1) a positive relationship between the relative volatility of consumption to output and the size of the informal economy, and (2) countercyclical interest rates in emerging countries. I show that in a two-sector real business cycle model of a small open economy with a poorly measured informal sector, an increase in country interest rate generates a contraction in output, consumption, investment, hours, an improvement in trade balance-to-output ratio, and an expansion of informal sector.