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...

Using a recent Spanish database on immigrants from all across the globe, we show that remittances respond to differences in macroeconomic conditions at home and abroad. This behavior suggests that immigrants are sophisticated economic optimizers who take advantage of differential returns when...

We examine how remittances relate to the exchange rate, natural disasters and foreign aid focusing on Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Using panel VAR methods, we are able to compensate for both data limitations and endogeneity issues. While remittances respond to innovations in the...

A sizable literature has concluded that remittances impact the expenditure patterns of households. We explore how the uncertainty of remittance income inflows affects the accumulation of human, physical and financial assets of Mexican households, while accounting for the level of transfers from...

Using a recent Spanish database, we show that remittances respond to cross country differences in portfolio values. This behavior suggests that immigrants are sophisticated economic optimizers who take advantage of opportunities to invest trans-nationally given the networks that immigrants are...

Covering both qualitative and quantitative topics, the expert contributors in this Handbook explore fundamental issues of scientific logic, methodology and methods, through to practical applications of different techniques and approaches in migration research.

Using a recent Spanish database, we show that remittances respond to cross-country differences in portfolio values, behavior consistent with immigrant’s access to trans-national networks. Responsiveness to portfolio variables is found to persist regardless of education level. There are,...

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...

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...

Using the 2006 and 2010 Health and Retirement Study, we explore how the recent recession impacted the wealth holding and retirement plans of older households in the United States. Of particular interest to us is whether the impact on household asset ownership, asset wealth and household...