The efficiency assessment of installation of a non-cash system in the public transport to combat the shadow economy

Abstract

This article describes the shadow economy in the public passenger transport sphere in regions of Russia. The goal of the work is to evaluate the impact of a non-cash payment system on the shadow economy. The relevance is to obtain quantitative assessments of the effectiveness of contactless payments using debit, credit and/or transport cards as a tool to combat the concealment of income by transport organizations via hiding the data on passengers carried in regions of Russia. The author uses econometric analysis of panel data for the period 2015–2018, where the dependent variable is the number of passengers carried. Among the independent variables are such indicators as price for a ride, number of population, number of buses, income of population, and other indicators that reflect presence or absence of discount for paying for a ride via debit, credit and/or transport cards in regions in Russia. The model considers autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity of the error in the regression, but also endogeneity of the variable «Price for a ride». As the results of research, absence of discount via a debit/credit card and discount via a transport card leads to an increase of the number of passengers carried. Meanwhile, presence of discount via a debit/credit card and absence of discount via a transport card does not lead to an increase of the number of passengers carried. At the end of 2018 a non-cash system got the most proliferation in the municipal transport than in commercial one