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Do Workers' Remittances Promote Economic Growth?

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Author Info

  • Michael T. Gapen
  • Ralph Chami
  • Peter Montiel
  • Adolfo Barajas
  • Connel Fullenkamp

Abstract

Over the past decades, workers' remittances have grown to become one of the largest sources of financial flows to developing countries, often dwarfing other widely-studied sources such as private capital and official aid flows. While it is undeniable that remittances have poverty-alleviating and consumption-smoothing effects on recipient households, a key empirical question is whether they also serve to promote long-run economic growth. This study tackles this question and addresses the main shortcomings of previous empirical work, focusing on the appropriate measurement, and incorporating an instrument that is both correlated with remittances and would only be expected to affect growth through its effect on remittances. The results show that, at best, workers' remittances have no impact on economic growth.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by International Monetary Fund in its series IMF Working Papers with number 09/153.

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Length: 35
Date of creation: 01 Jul 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:09/153

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Related research

Keywords: Economic growth; Poverty; Welfare; Capital accumulation; Capital flows; Developing countries; Labor markets; Migration; Poverty reduction; Private capital flows; Transfers of foreigners income; Workers remittances;

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

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  1. Emmanuel K.K. Lartey & Federico S. Mandelman & Pablo A. Acosta, 2008. "Remittances, exchange rate regimes, and the Dutch disease: a panel data analysis," Working Paper 2008-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
  2. Michael T. Gapen & Thomas F. Cosimano & Ralph Chami, 2006. "Beware of Emigrants Bearing Gifts: Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy in the Presence of Remittances," IMF Working Papers 06/61, International Monetary Fund.
  3. Jihad Dagher & Ralph Chami & Peter Montiel & Yasser Abdih, 2008. "Remittances and Institutions: Are Remittances a Curse?," IMF Working Papers 08/29, International Monetary Fund.
  4. Acosta, Pablo A. & Lartey, Emmanuel K.K. & Mandelman, Federico S., 2009. "Remittances and the Dutch disease," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 102-116, September.
  5. Giuliano, Paola & Ruiz-Arranz, Marta, 2009. "Remittances, financial development, and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 144-152, September.
  6. Michael Gapen & Thomas Cosimano & Ralph Chami, 2006. "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy in the Presence of Remittances," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 34, Society for Computational Economics.
  7. Ralph Chami & Connel Fullenkamp & Samir Jahjah, 2005. "Are Immigrant Remittance Flows a Source of Capital for Development?," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 52(1), pages 55-81, April.
  8. Dalia Hakura & Ralph Chami & Peter Montiel, 2009. "Remittances: An Automatic Output Stabilizer?," IMF Working Papers 09/91, International Monetary Fund.
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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Do remittances help growth back home?
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2009-11-11 15:19:00
  2. Pengar till fattiga länder
    by nonicoclolasos in Nonicoclolasos on 2009-12-27 13:39:51
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
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Cited by:
  1. Mohammad Irfan, 2011. "Remittances and Poverty Linkages in Pakistan: Evidence and Some Suggestions for Further Analysis," PIDE-Working Papers 2011:78, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
  2. Katsushi Imai & Raghav Gaiha & Abdilahi Ali & Nidhi Kaicker, 2013. "Remittances, Growth and Poverty: New Evidence from Asian Countries," Discussion Paper Series DP2013-18, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
  3. Yaw Nyarko and Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong, 2011. "Social Safety Nets: The Role of Education, Remittances and Migration," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 26, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
  4. Hassan, Gazi, 2010. "Remittances and Poverty: Panel Evidence from High Remittance Economies," MPRA Paper 26445, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  5. Raza, Syed Ali & Sabir, Muhammad Sarwar & Mehboob, Farhan, 2011. "Capital inflows and economic growth in Pakistan," MPRA Paper 36790, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  6. Ralph Chami & Yasser Abdih & Amine Mati & Michael T. Gapen, 2009. "Fiscal Sustainability in Remittance-Dependent Economies," IMF Working Papers 09/190, International Monetary Fund.
  7. Rao, B. Bhaskara & Hassan, Gazi Mainul, 2011. "A panel data analysis of the growth effects of remittances," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 701-709.
  8. Yasser Abdih & Ralph Chami & Christian Ebeke & Adolfo Barajas, 2012. "Remittances Channel and Fiscal Impact in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia," IMF Working Papers 12/104, International Monetary Fund.
  9. Oloufade, Djoulassi K. & Pongou, Roland, 2012. "Dual Citizenship Institution: A Pareto Improvement?," MPRA Paper 40705, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Aug 2012.
  10. Ratha, Dilip & Mohapatra, Sanket & Scheja, Elina, 2011. "Impact of migration on economic and social development : a review of evidence and emerging issues," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5558, The World Bank.
  11. Hassan, Gazi & Holmes, Mark, 2012. "Remittances and the real effective exchange rate," MPRA Paper 40084, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  12. Rahila Munir & Maqbool H. Sial & Ghulam Sarwar & Samina Shaheen, 2011. "Effect of Workers Remittances on Private Savings Behavior in Pakistan," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 1(3), pages 95-103, September.

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