Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) economies have had the highest degree of dependency on received remittances worldwide over the last three decades. The region has also had the highest non-oil external trade balance deficit among developing countries. We examine the role of remittances in...

A heightened interest in understanding the remitting practices of immigrants and their impact on a variety of economic indicators has emerged as remittances to developing countries have risen substantially over the past decade. If remittances primarily enhance consumption, they may have no...

The economic wellbeing of a large number of rural Kosovar families depends heavily on migrants' remittances. This paper aims at analysing the impact of migration on rural poverty and inequality in Kosovo. It draws on the 2009 nationally representative Kosovo Remittance Study. Analyses are based...

Workers’ remittances have become the second largest source of net financial flows to developing countries. However, the main motives for sending remittances remain controversial. This paper examines the importance of altruistic versus investment motives using a new panel data set of bilateral...

The idea of selling membership into society is not new, but it has taken on new life with the recent proliferation globally of Immigrant Investor Programs (IIPs). These programs involve the sale of national membership privileges to wealthy foreigners. They are justified by attractive policy...

This contribution investigates the opportunities of migration for developing countries. The benefits of migration for sending countries are often undervalued. But migrants may foster trade, remittances, innovations, investments back home, and even return home at some time with better human...

We study how migration affects education of girls in Tajikistan - the poorest post-Soviet state and one of the most remittance-dependent economies in the world. Using data from a three-wave household panel survey conducted in 2007, 2009, and 2011, we find that the effect of migration on girls'...

Despite the growth of alcohol consumption and international migration in many developing countries, the links between the two remain underexplored. We study the relationship between emigration of household members, receiving remittances (migrant monetary transfers), and alcohol consumption of...

For decades, countries aspiring to join the European Union (EU) have been linked to it through migration. Yet little is known about how migration affects individual support for joining the EU in prospective member states. We explore the relationship between migration and support for EU accession...

Having a family member migrant reduces not only the labor force participation but also the job satisfaction of those left behind. Migrants' relatives build their expectations on earnings from migration through received information on the wage distribution in the destination country either from...