PhD student, economics.

Data visualizations from work-in-progress research. Source code provided on request.

Estimating the informal economy in California

This work is an attempt at measuring the size of the informal economy in California through comparing taxable personal consumption expenditure data from the household level to the actual amount of collected taxes. This is a first attempt to model the size of California’s informal economy based on the VAT-based measurements of tax evasion in Europe (Pappada & Rogoff 2023).

Map of CA (2023) identifying the total tax revenue to be collected per county.
Tax revenue by county
ACS-based estimate of household spending used to calculate county-level tax revenue.
Map of CA (2023) with effective county-level tax rates, where counties may have specific sales tax measures.
Tax rate by county
County tax rates, CA (2023)
Line chart 2005-2023 demonstrating the difference in estimated and actual tax revenue collection.
Estimated vs. actual CA sales tax revenue (2005-2023)
Actual sales tax revenue from FRED FED vs. the estimated amount of revenue derived from a PCE-based estimate
Line chart comparing aggregate output, labor, spending, and unemployment rate over time (min-max normalized)
Estimates (2005-2023)
Looking at the change in the normalized value over time of key aggregate values in CA's economy