SHADOWIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN A NEO-INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE: REGULATORY ARBITRAGE AND STRUCTURAL DUALITY

Abstract

Abstract. The article proposes a neo-institutional interpretation of the shadowization of international trade, in which the phenomenon of the shadow economy is analysed through the categories of transaction costs, institutional dysfunctions and regulatory arbitrage. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the structural duality of economic systems - the sustained coexistence of formal and informal sectors - is not a self-explanatory characteristic of the economic order but an analytically derivable consequence of specific institutional configurations. It is substantiated that in international trade, institutional gaps between jurisdictions generate systemic incentives for regulatory arbitrage, which transforms the shadow economy from a marginal anomaly into a structurally embedded component of cross-border economic relations. A typology of institutional mechanisms of shadowization of international trade is proposed, including trade misinvoicing, jurisdictional tax engineering, and digital channels for circumventing fiscal control. It is demonstrated that the digitalization of international trade creates a qualitatively new dimension of shadowization, where traditional control mechanisms prove ineffective and the boundary between optimization and shadow activity becomes increasingly blurred. The concept of structural duality is reinterpreted as a product of institutional misalignment: the informal sector is sustained not by cultural inertia or underdevelopment, but by the rational response of agents to high transaction costs of legal activity and weak enforcement. The article concludes that effective de-shadowization policy requires not so much the strengthening of repressive mechanisms as the reduction of institutional barriers, the harmonization of regulatory regimes between jurisdictions and the creation of conditions under which legal activity becomes economically more attractive than shadow activity.

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Received: 02.02.26 / Revised: 16.02.26 / Accepted: 18.03.26 / Published:30.03.26