Exploring the Underground Economy to support Public Decision Makers to tackle the Growth of Irregular Workers

摘要

The search for new resources to finance the necessary investments for fostering the economicgrowth led many States to adopt policies to tackle the underground economy and, in particular, tostruggle the phenomenon of irregular workers. In most of the cases, such policies failed to stronglyreduce the percentage of irregular workers because they were based on a linear and staticapproach.Based on a research project conducted in Sicily Region (Italy), this article aims at investigating -through the System Dynamics (SD) methodology - main causes-and-effects relationshipsunderlying the phenomenon of irregular workers at both firm and self-employment level.In particular, through the developed SD model, different potential policies will be analysed in orderto identify a systemic strategy that could hinder the phenomenon of irregular workers.