IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mts/wpaper/200802.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Remittances on Economic Growth and Development in Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Bichaka Fayissa
  • Christian Nsiah

Abstract

For more than half a century, there have been heated debates on the sources of economic growth in developing economies. The perceived factors of economic growth have ranged from surplus labor to capital investment and technological change, foreign aid, foreign direct investment, investment in human capital, increasing returns from investment in new ideas and research and development. The positive or negative impacts of the above listed traditional sources of economic growth have been well documented in literature. Other researchers have also considered the importance of institutional factors such as the role of political freedom, political instability, voice and accountability on economic growth and development. Despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows, however, the direct or indirect relationship between remittances and economic growth has not been adequately studied. This study explores the aggregate impact of remittances on economic growth within the conventional neoclassical growth framework using an unbalanced panel data spanning from1980 to 2004 for 37 African countries. We find that remittances boost growth in countries where the financial systems are less developed by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Bichaka Fayissa & Christian Nsiah, 2008. "The Impact of Remittances on Economic Growth and Development in Africa," Working Papers 200802, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
  • Handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:200802
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://capone.mtsu.edu/berc/working/WP2008_02remittances.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. de Mello, Luiz R, Jr, 1999. "Foreign Direct Investment-Led Growth: Evidence from Time Series and Panel Data," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(1), pages 133-151, January.
    2. Robert M. Solow, 1956. "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(1), pages 65-94.
    3. William Easterly & Ross Levine, 1997. "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 112(4), pages 1203-1250.
    4. Azam, Jean-Paul & Gubert, Flore, 2005. "Migrant Remittances and Economic Development in Africa: A Review of Evidence," IDEI Working Papers 354, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    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. Kaufmann, Daniel & Kraay, Aart & Mastruzzi, Massimo, 2007. "Governance Matters VI: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996-2006," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4280, The World Bank.
    7. Asli Demeirgüç-Kunt & Ross Levine (ed.), 0. "Finance and Growth," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 17119.
    8. Barro, Robert J, 1990. "Government Spending in a Simple Model of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 103-126, October.
    9. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    10. Papanek, Gustav F, 1973. "Aid, Foreign Private Investment, Savings, and Growth in Less Developed Countries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(1), pages 120-130, Jan.-Feb..
    11. Levine, Ross & Renelt, David, 1992. "A Sensitivity Analysis of Cross-Country Growth Regressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 942-963, September.
    12. Heller, Peter S, 1975. "A Model of Public Fiscal Behavior in Developing Countries: Aid, Investment, and Taxation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 429-445, June.
    13. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-I-Martin, 1992. "Public Finance in Models of Economic Growth," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(4), pages 645-661.
    14. Beck, Thorsten & Levine, Ross & Loayza, Norman, 2000. "Finance and the sources of growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1-2), pages 261-300.
    15. Henrik Hansen & John Rand, 2006. "On the Causal Links Between FDI and Growth in Developing Countries," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 21-41, January.
    16. Caselli, Francesco & Esquivel, Gerardo & Lefort, Fernando, 1996. "Reopening the Convergence Debate: A New Look at Cross-Country Growth Empirics," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 363-389, September.
    17. Jonathan Temple, 1999. "The New Growth Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 112-156, March.
    18. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bichaka Fayissa & Christian Nsiah, 2010. "Can Remittances Spur Economic Growth and Development? Evidence from Latin American Countries (LACs)," Working Papers 201006, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
    2. Young Eun Kim & Norman V. Loayza, 2019. "Productivity Growth: Patterns and Determinants across the World," Revista Economía, Fondo Editorial - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, vol. 42(84), pages 36-93.
    3. Carton, Christine & Ronquillo, Cely, 2008. "Determinantes del crecimiento económico e intermediación bancaria: un análisis empírico para países latinoamericanos [Determinants of economic growth and bank intermediation: empirical analysis for," MPRA Paper 15514, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 25 Nov 2008.
    4. Nihal Bayraktar, 2019. "Effectiveness of public investment on growth in sub-Saharan Africa," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 9(4), pages 421-457, December.
    5. Vu, Khuong M & Asongu, Simplice, 2020. "Backwardness advantage and economic growth in the information age: A cross-country empirical study," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    6. Stojcic, Nebojsa & Suman Tolic, Meri, 2018. "Direct and indirect effects of fiscal decentralisation on economic growth," MPRA Paper 108762, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised May 2019.
    7. Nazrul Islam, 2003. "What have We Learnt from the Convergence Debate?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(3), pages 309-362, July.
    8. Måns Söderbom & Francis Teal, 2003. "Openness and human capital as sources of productivity growth: An empirical investigation," CSAE Working Paper Series 2003-06, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    9. Roberto Leon-Gonzalez & Daniel Montolio, 2004. "Growth, convergence and public investment. A Bayesian model averaging approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(17), pages 1925-1936.
    10. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Kotschy, Rainer & Prettner, Klaus & Schünemann, Johannes, 2018. "Health and Economic Growth: Reconciling the Micro and Macro Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 11940, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Celine Bonnefond, 2014. "Growth Dynamics And Conditional Convergence Among Chinese Provinces: A Panel Data Investigation Using System Gmm Estimator," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 39(4), pages 1-25, December.
    12. Ross Levine & Norman Loayza & Thorsten Beck, 2002. "Financial Intermediation and Growth: Causality and Causes," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Leonardo Hernández & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Se (ed.),Banking, Financial Integration, and International Crises, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 2, pages 031-084, Central Bank of Chile.
    13. Celal Kucuker, 2003. "Türkiye Ýktisat Kongresi Büyüme Stratejileri Çalýþma Grubu," Working Papers 2003/5, Turkish Economic Association.
    14. Capolupo, Rosa, 2009. "The New Growth Theories and Their Empirics after Twenty Years," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-72.
    15. Dimitrios Paparas & Christian Richter, 2015. "Fiscal policy and economic growth: Empirical evidence from the European Union," Working Papers 2015.06, International Network for Economic Research - INFER.
    16. Babajide Fowowe, 2013. "Financial Liberalization In Sub-Saharan Africa: What Do We Know?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 1-37, February.
    17. Leon-Gonzalez, Roberto & Vinayagathasan, Thanabalasingam, 2015. "Robust determinants of growth in Asian developing economies: A Bayesian panel data model averaging approach," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 34-46.
    18. Norman Gemmell, 2001. "Fiscal Policy in a Growth Framework," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2001-84, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Deodat E. Adenutsi, 2011. "Financial development, international migrant remittances and endogenous growth in Ghana," Studies in Economics and Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 28(1), pages 68-89, March.
    20. Ibrahim B. Kamara, 2007. "The Direct Productivity Impact of Infrastructure Investment: Dynamic Panel Data Evidence From Sub Saharan Africa," Working Papers 048, Economic Research Southern Africa.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Workers’ Remittances; Economic Growth; Panel Data; Fixed-Effects; Random-Effects; Arellano-Bond; Quantile Regression;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:200802. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: E. Anthon Eff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/efmtsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.