Content №3 от 2021

Cashless Payments on Buses and their Impact on Concealed Revenues by Transport Organizations

The article exams the shadow economy in public passenger transport across Russian regions. The goal of this research is to assess the effect of a newly established cashless system on the size of declared revenues by domestic transport organizations. The research relevancy is expressed in quantitative evaluations of how the cashless system, along with discounts for cashless payments, helps combat the concealment of revenues by transport organi­zations. We use an econometric analysis of panel data for the period between 2014 and 2019. The Fixed effects model is chosen as the best among others. The econometric model considers heteroscedasticity and endogeneity of the average bus fares. The obtained data indicate that the cashless system with payments by debit and credit cards leads to increased transport organizations’ declared revenues. In contrast, the same cashless system with payments by transport cards does not lead to such an increase. In 2019, cashless payments were spread more in municipal and public transport rather than in commercial vehicles.

Uvarov E. A. euvarov@hse.ru; gbk-63@mail.ru

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