The strong economic ties between the GCC economies and the U.S. are manifested in three ways: currency peg, coupling of monetary policy, and the adoption of the U.S. dollar as the trading currency for oil. This paper examines how these dynamics result in a misalignment of the U.S. monetary...

The literature on remittances is large and growing. However, its focus has mainly been on the effects of remittance inflows on the receiving economies. Little has been done on the sending economies. In this paper, we use data from Saudi Arabia, one of the top remitting countries in the world, to...

We investigate the responsiveness of remittances from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to the changes in the price of crude oil. Most of the GCC countries rank in the top 20 remitting countries in the world. We find that oil price elasticity of remittances is around 0.4. While most...

We examine the effect of remittance outflows on inflation in the remitting countries. The growth of remittance outflows depresses inflation rate.

While remittances from the GCC countries to Asia slowed down during the crisis, there is no evidence of large decreases. On the other hand, remittances to several MENA countries decreased during 2009, but the evidence for 2010 suggests a reversal of this pattern. Most of the recent labour...