Can Remittances Spur Economic Growth and Development? Evidence from Latin American Countries (LACs)

For the last five decades, 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 investment in human and physical capital, transfer of technological change, overseas development assistance, flow of private capital, increasing returns from investment in new ideas and research and development. The impacts of the above listed traditional sources of economic growth have been well documented in literature. 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 increased size of remittances in the total international capital flows, however, the relationship between remittances and economic growth has not been adequately studied. This study explores the aggregate impact of remittances on the economic growth of 18 Latin American Countries within the conventional neoclassical growth framework using an unbalanced panel data spanning from 1980 to 2005. We find that remittances have a positive and significant effect on the growth of Latin American Countries where the financial systems are less developed by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints.