Do Workers' Remittances Promote Financial Development?

Do Workers' Remittances Promote Financial Development?
Author: Reena Aggarwal
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2006
Genre: Desarrollo financiero
ISBN:

"Workers' remittances to developing countries have become the second largest type of flows after foreign direct investment. The authors use data on workers' remittance flows to 99 developing countries from 1975-2003 to study the impact of remittances on financial sector development. In particular, they examine whether remittances contribute to increasing the aggregate level of deposits and credit intermediated by the local banking sector. This is an important question considering the extensive literature that has documented the growth-enhancing and poverty-reducing effects of financial development. The findings provide strong support for the notion that remittances promote financial development in developing countries."--World Bank web site.

The Impact of Remittances on Economic Activity: The Importance of Sectoral Linkages

The Impact of Remittances on Economic Activity: The Importance of Sectoral Linkages
Author: Hector Perez-Saiz
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 37
Release: 2019-08-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498324487

We propose a simple macroeconomic model with input-output sectoral linkages based on Acemoglu et al. (2016) to quantify how changes in aggregate demand due to additional income from household’s remittances propagates through the network of input-output linkages in Sub-Saharan African countries. We first propose two network centrality measures to assess the role of some sectors as key input providers in the economy. Then, we use these measures to quantify the effect of sectoral linkages on sectoral and total output following an increase in remittances inflows. Our empirical results suggest that the effects of remittances on recipient economies increase with the degree of linkages across sectors, which is especially prominent in the case of the financial intermediation sector. Our paper contributes to the emerging macroeconomic literature on the propagation of shocks across sectors and the implications for the whole economy.

Remittances, Financial Development, and Growth

Remittances, Financial Development, and Growth
Author: Paola Giuliano
Publisher: INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
Total Pages: 39
Release: 2005-12-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9781451862539

There has been little systematic empirical study on the relationship between remittances and growth. This paper attempts to examine this relationship. Using a newly constructed crosscountry of data series for remittances covering a large sample of developing countries, we relate the interaction between remittances and financial development and its impact on growth. We analyze how a country's capacity to use remittances and its effectiveness in doing so might be influenced by local financial sector conditions. Given the difficulty of borrowing in developing countries, we explore the hypothesis that remittances can substitute for a lack of financial development and hence promote growth. The empirical analysis shows that remittances can promote growth in less financially developed countries. This relationship controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development using a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach, does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used, and is robust to a number of sensitivity tests.

Impact of Remittances on Poverty and Financial Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Impact of Remittances on Poverty and Financial Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
Author: Sanjeev Gupta
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2007-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This paper assesses the impact of the steadily growing remittance flows to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Though the region receives only a small portion of the total recorded remittances to developing countries, and the volume of aid flows to SSA swamps remittances, this paper finds that remittances, which are a stable, private transfer, have a direct poverty mitigating effect, and promote financial development. These findings hold even after factoring in the reverse causality between remittances, poverty and financial development. The paper posits that formalizing such flows can serve as an effective access point for "unbanked" individuals and households, and that the effective use of such flows can mitigate the costs of skilled out-migration in SSA.

Towards Inclusive Growth in Africa

Towards Inclusive Growth in Africa
Author: Isaac Kwesi Ofori
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre:
ISBN:

The study employs macro data for 42 African countries to examine the interactive and threshold effects of financial development in the remittances-inclusive growth relationship. First, evidence based on the system GMM estimator shows that remittances are not statistically significant in promoting inclusive growth in Africa. Notably, across the economic growth and income inequality dimensions of inclusive growth, we find that although remittances are ineffective in boosting the former, they deepen the latter. Second, we find that Africa's underdeveloped financial sector dampens the marginal positive effect of remittances on inclusive growth. Third, our threshold analysis indicates that for financial development to interact with complementary policies to foster inclusive growth in Africa, a minimum threshold of 14.5% is required. We conclude by informing policy on the level of investments needed for financial development to promote fairer income growth and distribution in Africa.

Global Economic Prospects 2006

Global Economic Prospects 2006
Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 182
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 082136345X

International migration, the movement of people across international boundaries to improve economic opportunity, has enormous implications for growth and welfare in both origin and destination countries. An important benefit to developing countries is the receipt of remittances or transfers from income earned by overseas emigrants. Official data show that development countries' remittance receipts totaled 160 billion in 2004, more than twice the size of official aid. This year's edition of Global Economic Prospects focuses on remittances and migration. The bulk of the book covers remittances.

Remittances

Remittances
Author: Samuel Munzele Maimbo
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821357948

Migrants have long faced unwarranted constraints to sending money to family members and relatives in their home countries, among them costly fees and commissions, inconvenient formal banking hours, and inefficient domestic banking services that delay final payment to the beneficiaries. Yet such remittances are perhaps the largest source of external finance in developing countries. Officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries exceeded US$125 billion in 2004, making them the second largest source of development finance after foreign direct investment. This book demonstrates that governments in developing countries increasingly recognize the importance of remittance flows and are quickly addressing these constraints.

Remittances, Financial Development, and Growth

Remittances, Financial Development, and Growth
Author: Paola Giuliano
Publisher:
Total Pages: 41
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

There has been little systematic empirical study on the relationship between remittances and growth. This paper attempts to examine this relationship. Using a newly constructed cross-country of data series for remittances covering a large sample of developing countries, we relate the interaction between remittances and financial development and its impact on growth. We analyze how a country's capacity to use remittances and its effectiveness in doing so might be influenced by local financial sector conditions. Given the difficulty of borrowing in developing countries, we explore the hypothesis that remittances can substitute for a lack of financial development and hence promote growth. The empirical analysis shows that remittances can promote growth in less financially developed countries. This relationship controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development using a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach, does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used, and is robust to a number of sensitivity tests.

Remittance Markets in Africa

Remittance Markets in Africa
Author: Sanket Mohapatra
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0821385534

Remittances sent by African migrants have become an important source of external finance for countries in the Sub-Saharan African region. In many African countries, these flows are larger than foreign direct investment and portfolio debt and equity flows. In some cases, they are similar in size to official aid from multilateral and bilateral donors. Remittance markets in Africa, however, remain less developed than other regions. The share of informal or unrecorded remittances is among the highest for Sub-Saharan African countries. Remittance costs tend to be significantly higher in Africa both for sending remittances from outside the region and for within-Africa (South-South) remittance corridors. At the same time, the remittance landscape in Africa is rapidly changing with the introduction of new remittance technologies, in particular mobile money transfers and branchless banking. This book presents findings of surveys of remittance service providers conducted in eight Sub-Saharan African countries and in three key destination countries. It looks at issues relating to costs, competition, innovation and regulation, and discusses policy options for leveraging remittances for development in Africa.