Over the past decade, a number of federal and state policies intended to stem the flow of illegal immigration have been implemented. In this paper, we focus on two initiatives: (a) Operation Streamline, as an example of increased border enforcement by the federal government, and (b) state-level...

Due to inadequate savings and binding borrowing constraints, income volatility can make households in developing countries particularly susceptible to economic hardship. We examine the role of remittances in either alleviating or increasing household income volatility using Mexican household...

While a sizable literature has concluded that remittances impact the expenditure patterns of households, we have a limited understanding of how the predictability of these money flows affect their usage by remittance-receiving households. Using data from Mexico, we find that both the size and...

In this paper, we focus on the use of remittances to school children remaining in migrant communities in Haiti. After addressing the endogeneity of remittance receipt, we find that remittances raise school attendance for all children in some communities regardless of whether they have household...