Author(s): Nidal Shaker Jodah, Hanaa A. Hammood
The research aims to study and analyze the environment of the informal economy in Iraq and clarify its dimensions, justify its worsening and measure the size of the informal economy to arrive to propose treatments and policies with a view to addressing the problem of the interlocking between this economy and the formal economy to know the true size of each. The research adopts the quantitative approach to measure its size of informal economy in Iraq for the period 1990-2017 for the purpose of monitoring the size of this phenomenon according to the fixed ratios method that assumes that the cash ratio of currencies to demand deposits can be fixed If the informal economy did not exist. 2009 would be chosen as the base year (Golden Period) as it had the lowest percentage of the informal economy.
The size of the informal economy was measured in absolute value as well as a proportion of gross domestic product with economic analysis of these ratios over two time periods, the 1990s, on the one hand, and the period from 2000-2017, on the other hand. The results of the research showed that the informal economy constitutes a major challenge for the Iraqi economy and a set of treatments has been proposed to ensure the sustainable development in Iraq.