Remittances Review

Editorial

Jeffrey H. Cohen — 2022-05-31

Front Matter

Editors Rem Rev — 2022-05-31

Remittances and trade balance: A new transfer problem

Ram Hari Regmi — 2022-05-31

Remittances are an important inflow of funds in many developing economies. These remittances relate to the classic 'transfer problem' and hence likely affect the exchange rate. In this paper, I find that remittances have a significant negative impact on trade balances and that the driving force is the exchange rate. Additionally, I find that remittance has a positive impact on trade openness, and hence decrease in the trade balance is because the growth rate of imports is higher than the growth rate of exports.

Manipulating Remittances: Strengthening Autocratic Regimes with Currency Overvaluation and Remittance Flows

Christopher Culver — 2022-05-31

This paper investigates the link between remittances and autocratic regime stability. It challenges the prevailing assumption that remittances cannot be directly captured as a source of hard capital by states. It proposes that remittances increase regime durability by incentivizing and enabling currency overvaluation and seigniorage revenue generation in autocratic states that produce non-freely convertible currencies. It uses cross-national time-series data from autocratic regimes in Sub-Saharan African countries from 1975-2015 to test this theory. The analysis shows that remittances increase autocratic regime durability in countries that have monopoly control over domestic currency production.

An Analysis of the Macroeconomic Determinants of Peruvian Remittances

German Zarate-Hoyos — 2022-05-31

This paper evaluates the impact of several macroeconomic variables on the Peruvian remittances flow, as well as the existence of cointegration between them, during the period 1992 – 2017. To do so, the United States was chosen as the host country for the Peruvian migrants and the paper used quarterly data, American and Peruvian variables and a vector of error correction (VEC). Among the main results, evidence of co-integrated variables was confirmed, a structural break was found, and the impact of some macroeconomic determinants corroborate the predominance of the self-interest effect over the altruist one in the Peruvian migrants’ behavior.

Remittance and financial development in Africa: A multidimensional analysis

Titus Ojeyinka — 2022-05-31

Previous studies on the nexus between remittances and financial system development are less informative due to their failure to investigate how remittance inflows affect different aspects of the financial sector in Africa. In the study, we re-investigate the impact of the remittances on the African financial system in twenty-seven (27) countries for 1980-2017 using the Augmented Mean Group (AGM) estimating technique. The results show that remittance does not have any significant impact on different dimensions of financial development in Africa. This finding is robust to alternative estimating techniques. This implies that remittance inflow is not a major driver of financial development in African countries. The outcomes of this study show that it is important to go beyond the use of conventional measures of financial development and focus more on multidimensional aspects of the sector such as access and efficiency of both the financial institutions and financial markets. It is also worth noting that remittance inflows in African regions are under-documented due to the high level of the shadow economy. The study suggests that the African government should formulate policies encouraging African migrants to pass through formal channels when remitting for the benefits of the financial sector and the economy in general. The policy should also encourage remittance savings and their utilisation in the African productive sector.

Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Remittance Inflow-Economic Growth-Nexus in India: Lessons from an Asymmetric Analysis

Keshmeer Makun — 2022-05-31

The relentless spread of the Covid-19 pandemic from the first quarter of 2020 and the emergence of new variants since early 2021 have caused a steep decline in economic activities in all countries. The forecast by international agencies including World Bank is that remittances (REM) on a global scale would decline by 20 percent in 2021; and to South Asia in particular would decrease by 25 percent. India, a low-middle-income country, which has been among the top ten REM recipient countries, is expected to be adversely affected much more. This study examines the asymmetric effects of REM on India’s per capita GDP by using a nonlinear methodology. Additionally, factors like ICT and the financial sector are considered in an extended version of the remittance-growth relationship. The study findings reveal that the impact of the negative partial sum of decomposition of REM is higher than the impact of positive partial sum decomposition of REM, implying a greater adverse effect of declining remittances on per capita GDP growth. The findings are expected to be of substantial importance in designing appropriate policies that affect economic growth through the interaction of remittances with ICT, and financial markets.