Macroeconomic Factors Influencing Foreign Remittances: The Case of Bangladesh

This paper examines the influence of few selected macroeconomic factors which are assumed to have influence on the flow of foreign remittances in Bangladesh. Yearly data between 1976 and 2011 have incorporated and a multivariate time series regression model have been designed to estimate the absolute relationship between remittances and macroeconomic determinants. It has found that professional and unskilled migrant have very low negative but significant regression coefficients but semi-skilled migrants have positive significant coefficient. Among other macroeconomic factors deposit interest rates and foreign exchange rates are also found to have statistically significant coefficients. Test of Granger causality reveals that foreign remittances have bi-directional causality with semi-skilled and un-skilled migrants and have uni-directional causality from professional migrants to remittances and remittances to DSE all share price index. However, extensive investigation is very essential to identify other macro economic factors that might cause the flow of foreign remittances in Bangladesh.