Business Cycles and Workers' Remittances: How Do Migrant Workers Respond to Cyclical Movements of GDP at Home?

By S. Sayan. Social Science Research Network, 2006

173 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Workers' remittances are often argued to have a tendency to move countercyclically with the GDP in recipient countries since migrant workers are expected to remit more during down cycles of economic activity back home. Yet, how much to remit is a complex decision involving other factors, and different variables driving remittance behavior are differently affected by the state of economic activity over the business cycle. This paper investigates the behavior of workers' remittances flows into 12 developing countries over their respective business cycles during 1976-2003 and finds that countercyclicality of receipts is not commonly observed across these countries.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aff392592833db99349d0ede19c1c9471b35497e

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In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Remittances, transaction costs, and informality (2008, methodology): “Previous work by Aggarwal and Spatafora (2005) and Sayan (2006) ☆ We are grateful to Irena Omelaniuk for providing us with IOM studies of remittances in several countries and for helpful discussions, to Dean Yang for generously providing data and summary statistics on the mode of remittance…”
Migration and Remittances during the Global Financial Crisis and Beyond (2012, background): “Some other studies have found that remittances are strongly countercyclical in poorer countries such as Bangladesh and India, but procyclical in middle-income countries such as Jordan and Morocco (Sayan 2006; World Bank 2006a).”
Remittances and the Use of Formal and Informal Financial Services (2016, unknown): “…1998; Koechlin & León, 2006), spending behavior (Adams & Cuecuecha, 2010; Cox Edwards & Ureta, 2003; Massey & Parrado, 1998; Woodruff & Zenteno, 2007; Yang, 2008) and macroeconomic effects (Acosta, Fajnzylber, & Lopez, 2007; Amuedo-Dorantes & Pozo, 2004; Buch & Kuckulenz, 2010; Sayan, 2006).”
Determinants and Macroeconomic Impact of Remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa (2009, unknown): “While many studies find that home income is negatively correlated with remittances (e.g., BouhgaHagbe, 2006; El-Sakka and McNabb, 1999; Yang and Choi, 2007), Sayan (2006) argues that the countercyclicality of remittances has little empirical grounds.”
Remittances and Vulnerability in Developing Countries (2014, background): “Others, however, find that remittances are procyclical with respect to the recipient countries (Giuliano and Ruiz-Arranz, 2009; Sayan, 2006; Cooray and Mallick, 2013); also, Naudé and Bezuidenhout (2012) finds that the outbreak of armed conflict has no impact on remittances to Sub-Saharan…”
The Macroeconomic Consequences of Remittances (2012, background): “Being able to distinguish the end use of remittances is crucial in looking at the final effect on output (Burgess and Haksar (2005), Heilmann (2006) and Sayan (2006)).”
Are Bilateral Remittances Countercyclical? (2011, background): “Schiopu and Siegfried (2006) also created a data set on bilateral remittances between a subset of European Union countries and neighbors.”
Remittances flow and financial development in Bangladesh (2011, background): “The flow of remittances acts as a significant macroeconomic stabiliser and often counter cyclical as it is observed to be increased during economic downturns in the developing countries (Sayan, 2006).”