Narrow Results

This paper investigates the impact of remittances on economic growth for the ten MENA countries for the MENA region over a period from 1980 to 2021. Our contribution consists in decomposing the effect of remittances on economic growth into a direct effect and an indirect effect which are transmitted through the domestic investment channel and human capital channel. To do so, our econometric approach is based on dynamic panel data (GMM diff and GMM sys) in order to overcome endogeneity and inverse causality bias. Two main results can be identified: First, the results show that remittances negatively affect economic growth. Second, we show that the interaction terms between remittances and human capital ($\mathrm{\text{Rem}}\ast \mathrm{\text{enrol}}$) and remittances and domestic investment ($\mathrm{\text{Rem}}\ast \mathrm{\text{inv}}$) are positive and statistically significant in the dynamic panel approach. These results show that the effectiveness of migrant remittances in terms of economic growth depends heavily on improving human capital and orienting remittances to the most productive investments for MENA countries. The policy implications of our study are that governments of the most remittance-receiving countries in the MENA region must give great importance to improving domestic investment and the level of human capital in order to enhance remittances and promoting economic growth.

Remittance inflows are now the largest source of external financing to developing countries, but little research has yet firmly established the effect of remittances on household welfare. We investigate the case of Tajikistan, one of the most heavily remittance-dependent countries in the world. We use a panel dataset collected nationwide and employ an instrumental variable estimation to confirm a positive relationship between receiving remittances and household welfare after correcting for endogeneity. Moreover, we find that the effect of remittances on household spending is more pronounced in households whose head is male, older, and/or less educated. Then, we combine our estimated coefficients with the projected decline of remittance inflows as a result of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak and show the pandemic’s adverse effect on household spending per capita.

This paper examines the cyclicality of remittance inflows to economies in Asia and the Pacific, aiming to identify major factors associated with remittances using gravity models of bilateral remittances. An analysis that assesses correlation coefficients between the cyclical factors of remittances and gross domestic product suggests that remittances tend to be countercyclical, or acyclical, against the business cycle of the remittance-receiving economy relative to the sending economy. This observation is confirmed by the gravity models of bilateral remittances. Furthermore, the estimation results suggest that migrant stock is one of the most significant factors affecting bilateral remittances. The study also shows that an increase in bilateral remittances can be attributed to a higher occurrence of disasters triggered by natural hazards in receiving economies, an appreciation of the receiving economy’s currency value against the sending economy’s, a lower interest rate differential (receiver–sender), greater capital account openness, more political instability, and lower costs of remittances.

This paper investigates the role of gender in remittance behavior among migrants using the 2004 Vietnam Migration Survey data. The gender dimension to remittance behavior has not featured strongly in the existing literature and our findings thus contain novel appeal. In addition, we use estimates from both homoscedastic and heteroscedastic tobit models to decompose the raw gender difference in remittances into treatment and endowment components. We find little evidence that gender differences in remittances are attributable to behavioral differences between men and women, and this finding is invariant to whether the homoscedastic or heteroscedastic tobit is used in estimation.

Examining the impact of remittances on private investment, the study finds that remittances have an adverse impact on private investment and hence is apprehensive about its net positive impact on output growth in India. Therefore, the study suggests that the government policy should be designed toward inducing private sector to allocate more remittances for investments for leveling up the rate of economic growth. Otherwise, a significant proportion of remittances would result in increase in private consumption without desired contributory impact. The study also observes crowding out impact of public sector investment, while openness measure raises private sector investment.

Developing countries could be facing two linked trends that are potentially detrimental to their development prospects: outmigration of high-skilled professionals and the potential decline in remittances as migrants with higher skills may be less likely to remit or may remit less if they do. This paper examines this policy issue by empirically analyzing a cross-national dataset spanning 70 countries during the period 1985–2000, as well as a country-specific dataset for the Philippines. It finds little evidence that high-skilled migration is linked to lower remittances at the aggregate level. This finding coheres with more recent studies leveraging microlevel data.

Considering 11 major Asian migrant sending countries during 1975–2012, the study explores the factors that motivate migrants to remit their earnings to home countries. Using panel regressions, it finds that it is primarily the growth rate and interest rate differentials between the home and host, the household consumption and financial sector development at home along with per capita income of host countries which lead to remittances inflows. It concludes that it is not only the altruistic (or consumption) and higher interest income motives; but also the patriotic motives reflected from significant impact of past remittances, are crucial factors of such flows.

This study investigates the association between remittances, FDI, energy use, and CO₂ emissions for a sample of the top six Asian nations receiving remittances, namely, China, India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, during the 1982–2014 period. The results of employing an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-bound technique signify that there is a stable long-run association among the stated variables. The empirical findings indicate that CO₂ increases significantly with a rise in energy use in all sample nations in both the long and short-runs. Conversely, the association between CO₂ emissions and remittances is found to be significantly positive for Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Bangladesh in the long-run, positive for Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka only in the short-term, and non-significant for India and China in both the long and short-runs. Furthermore, the empirical results illustrate that the inflow of FDI significantly increases CO₂ emissions in the cases of China, Sri Lanka, and India in both the long and short-runs. While FDI inflow has no significant effect on CO₂ emissions for the Philippines and Pakistan, it has a significant negative effect for Bangladesh in both the long and short-runs. Thus, the connection between remittances, FDI, and CO₂ emissions varies significantly across the countries considered in our study.

This study looked at the possibility that South Asian countries’ financial prosperity may lessen poverty. The data presented in this research show that between 1990 and 2019, economic development directly led to a decline in poverty in South Asian nations. Remittances reduce poverty, but financial growth has a huge influence. The model result suggests that financial development strongly affects poverty reduction, regardless of the econometric methodology. The results demonstrated that whereas remittances increase poverty levels for men and women, economic development significantly reduces them. Poverty was decreased considerably by variables such as economic development, foreign direct investment and commercial openness. As a result of these expenditures, the South Asian population was shown to be more vulnerable to poverty. The South Asian population was more susceptible to poverty due to these outlays. The results also refute earlier research suggesting that rising poverty may result from financial instability.

This paper examines the impact of remittances on poverty alleviation in 15 selected Asian economies. Remittances have been identified as a potential source of income for households in developing countries and a means of reducing poverty. Using panel data from 2000 to 2020, we estimate the effect of remittances on poverty levels in these economies, controlling for other relevant factors such as GDP per capita, inflation rate and population growth. Our results suggest that remittances have a significant and negative impact on poverty levels in these economies, indicating that remittances play a crucial role in poverty reduction. The findings also reveal that the effect of remittances on poverty reduction varies across economies, with some economies experiencing a stronger poverty-reducing effect than others. The findings highlight the potential benefits of policies aimed at facilitating the flow of remittances and ensuring their effective use in reducing poverty in developing countries.

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This study is among a very few to investigate the impact of international remittances on bank credit and household investment. Using Fiji as a case study and the most recent available data on Household Income and Expenditure Survey together with applying three distinct econometric techniques, we find that remittances significantly increase the likelihood that households receiving remittances obtain income from investing. Remittances also positively influence the value of bank credit, although this effect is statistically weak.

The literature on the effects of aid and remittances as a share of GDP on growth of the GDP per capita has placed much emphasis on growth regressions thereby emphasising only the direct effects on growth. In order to get the total effect one has to capture the indirect ones too and integrate them with the direct effects. To do so we integrate all equations into a dynamic system and run a baseline simulation. We compare several scenarios — doubling aid, cutting remittances to half, and stopping net migration — to the baseline simulation for all variables.

The United States (US) economic recession has considerably affected employment among its immigrant Hispanic community, and as a consequence, remittances to Central America have plunged more than in any other region in the world. This paper provides evidence that the US housing crisis and the subsequent economic recession have affected the Central American region's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) beyond the traditional means of exports, exchange rates, and interest rates, namely, through remittances as well. Using a Vector Autoregression (VAR) model, we examine the case of El Salvador and find that major disturbances to the US economy have an immediate and substantial impact on remittances to this Central American nation.

This paper examines the theory of Dutch disease and its implications for practical policy questions. Dutch disease is a term that is well-known to economists and development practitioners. But it is also a concept that is often conflated with "resource curse" and misinterpreted as a "disease" that necessarily causes adverse impacts on the economy. The paper points out that many of the seemingly well-established arguments in this field are not necessarily grounded in theory or empirical evidence. Great care is needed in diagnosing Dutch disease and formulating policy prescriptions based on the theoretical framework, given the restrictive assumptions that may not be fully applicable and the limited relevance to today's inextricably intertwined trade flows.

This study provides updated modalities for ensuring equitable income distributions in developing countries. This was achieved through the lens of self-employment, information and communication technologies (ICT), and remittances. To circumvent the dark spots in prior studies, this study harnesses annual panel series for 52 African countries. The study engaged both the system generalized method of moments (sGMM) and the panel quantile regression with nonadditive fixed effects (QRPD) techniques to elicit updated insights. Meanwhile, three metrics of income inequality, the Gini coefficient, the Atkinson index, and the Palma ratio, were explored for robust insights. A key discovery from both panel computations is the self-exacerbating inclinations of income disparities in the continent. Furthermore, it was discovered that both self-employment and ICT are significant income equalization factors. However, their influence is most effective at the upper quantiles of inequality. The influence of remittance inflows is predominantly unfavorable for equitable income distribution. Both financial inclusion and government effectiveness provided varying inequality-reducing effects. Notably, their influence is more formidable at the upper quantiles. Human capital development provides some noticeable income equalization effects, particularly at the lower quantiles. Policy insights for minifying income inequality in the continent are highlighted herein.

This paper examines the effects of institutions and financial development on workers’ remittances in sub-Saharan Africa. To achieve the objectives, a two-step system generalized method of moment (GMM) was utilized on a panel dataset of 38 countries in the region from 2005 to 2022. Empirical findings from the study reveal that some institutional indicators, namely, control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability and rule of law have a significant impact in attracting remittances to SSA. Further evidence reveals that financial development indicators notably domestic credit to the private sector and domestic credit to the private sector by banks have a significant impact on remittances inflow in the region. Financial development indicators are found to complement some of the institutional indicators, such as control of corruption, political stability, government effectiveness, and rule of law on the inflow of remittances to the region. Government efforts should be geared toward improving the institutional framework and ensuring financial market development to increase the amount of remittances inflow to the region.

This paper examines the relationship between human development, remittances and other macroeconomic variables like life expectancy, human capital, FDI, inflation, economic growth and financial development by considering 31 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries during the period of 1990–2018. Kao and Fisher residual cointegration tests are applied to check the cointegration among the variables in the long-run. We apply fully modified OLS (FMOLS) and DOLS to show the long-run elasticity of explanatory variables on dependent variable. The result indicates that remittances have a positive and statistically significant effects on human development in SSA region. Similarly, government expenditure, human capital, inflation and economic growth have positive effects on human development in the region. Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel granger causality tests were observed such that there is a unidirectional causality between remittance and human development in SSA countries. However, human development and inflation rate show bi-directional relationship with each other. This paper suggests that public policies can be conceived to promote health, education and income, thereby encouraging and enhancing human development. Policymakers should also rely on other macroeconomic factors, such as government spending and financial development, to stimulate human development in SSA region.

This study investigates the impacts of workers’ remittances on real exchange rates and net export by using data for 101 developing countries from 1990 to 2015. One challenge in addressing the impacts of remittances on real exchange rates is the endogeneity of remittances. To address the endogeneity of remittances, we estimate bilateral remittances and use them to create weighted indicators of remittance-sending countries. These weighted indicators are used as instruments for remittance inflow to remittance-receiving countries. Results obtained in this study indicate that remittances lead to real exchange rates appreciation and net export reduction in remittance-receiving countries.

Nigeria has become one of the sub-Saharan Africa’s largest remittance recipients. Despite the economic benefits of remittances, there is rising concern about their impact on environmental degradation. The NARDL approach was used to analyze time-series data from 1980 to 2018, to determine the impact of remittances increases and decreases on environmental degradation in Nigeria. The cointegration results show that remittances and environmental degradation have a long-run relationship. The study found that remittances is asymmetrically connected to ecological footprint (EFP) as a measure of environmental degradation both in the long run and short run whereas it is asymmetrically connected with CO₂ as a measure of environmental degradation in the long run only. The study also found that remittances increase contributes to environmental degradation in Nigeria in the long run.