International Business Cycles and Remittance Flows

In this paper, we investigate the macroeconomic determinants and the effect of host country business cycles on remittance inflows. Estimating a dynamic panel data model by the system GMM, we document that remittance inflows are pro-cyclical to home country volatility but counter-cyclical to the volatility in host countries. This result does not hold for high income counties for which remittance inflows are acyclical to home country volatility but pro-cyclical to the volatility in host countries. For a host country, remittance outflows are counter-cyclical to the volatility of home countries. Trade openness is the single most important factor that determines both remittance inflows and outflows for the home and host countries, respectively.