Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp7983.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Do Remittances Facilitate Asset Accumulation? The Importance of Remittance Income Uncertainty

Author

Listed:
  • Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina

    (University of California, Merced)

  • Pozo, Susan

    (Western Michigan University)

Abstract
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 family abroad. We find that both the level and the uncertainty of remittance inflows raise asset accumulation among remittance-receiving households. Specifically, as predicted by the permanent income hypothesis and theories of precautionary saving, a one standard deviation increase in the uncertainty of remittance income raises the likelihood of household spending on asset accumulation by about 2 percentage points while raising the share of household expenditures on asset accumulation by 4 to 9 percent. These results suggest that both the level and the predictability of remittance income should be given full consideration in the analysis of household expenditure patterns and in the design of policies to leverage the most out of remittance inflows into developing economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina & Pozo, Susan, 2014. "When Do Remittances Facilitate Asset Accumulation? The Importance of Remittance Income Uncertainty," IZA Discussion Papers 7983, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7983
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp7983.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vera Chiodi & Esteban Jaimovich & Gabriel Montes-Rojas, 2012. "Migration, Remittances and Capital Accumulation: Evidence from Rural Mexico," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(8), pages 1139-1155, February.
    2. Vera Chiodi & Esteban Jaimovich & Gabriel Montes-Rojas, 2009. "Migration and capital accumulation: Evidence from rural Mexico," Working Papers halshs-00575022, HAL.
    3. Aberra Senbeta, 2013. "Remittances and the sources of growth," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(6), pages 572-580, April.
    4. Vera Chiodi & Vera Chiodi, 2012. "Migration and capital accumulation: Evidence from rural Mexico," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-01063694, HAL.
    5. repec:hal:pseose:hal-00813389 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Milton Friedman, 1957. "A Theory of the Consumption Function," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie57-1.
    7. Glytsos, Nicholas P, 1993. "Measuring the Income Effects of Migrant Remittances: A Methodological Approach Applied to Greece," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 131-168, October.
    8. German A. Zarate‐Hoyos, 2004. "Consumption and Remittances in Migrant Households: Toward a Productive Use of Remittances," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 22(4), pages 555-565, October.
    9. Milton Friedman, 1957. "Introduction to "A Theory of the Consumption Function"," NBER Chapters, in: A Theory of the Consumption Function, pages 1-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. K. Newey, Whitney, 1985. "Generalized method of moments specification testing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 229-256, September.
    11. Hayne E. Leland, 1968. "Saving and Uncertainty: The Precautionary Demand for Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(3), pages 465-473.
    12. Richard Adams, 2011. "Evaluating the Economic Impact of International Remittances On Developing Countries Using Household Surveys: A Literature Review," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(6), pages 809-828.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jean-Louis COMBES & Christian EBEKE & Mathilde MAUREL, 2011. "Remittances and the Prevalence of Working Poor," Working Papers 201109, CERDI.
    2. Junaid Ahmed & Mazhar Mughal & Stephan Klasen, 2018. "Great Expectations? Remittances and Asset Accumulation in Pakistan," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 507-532, April.
    3. Lei Bill Wang, 2023. "Estimating overidentified linear models with heteroskedasticity and outliers," Papers 2305.17615, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    4. Francisca M. Antman, 2013. "The impact of migration on family left behind," Chapters, in: Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Migration, chapter 16, pages 293-308, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Jean-Louis Combes & Christian Hubert Ebeke & Mathilde Maurel & Thierry Urbain Yogo, 2014. "Remittances and Working Poverty," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(10), pages 1348-1361, November.
    6. Antman, Francisca M., 2011. "The intergenerational effects of paternal migration on schooling and work: What can we learn from children's time allocations?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 200-208, November.
    7. Farai Jena, 2015. "Do Migrant Remittances Affect Household Purchases of Physical Investments and Durable Goods? Evidence for Kenya," Working Paper Series 7915, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    8. Dimitar Eftimoski, 2020. "Some new insights on economic convergence and growth in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 863-884, November.
    9. Randazzo, Teresa & Pavanello, Filippo & De Cian, Enrica, 2023. "Adaptation to climate change: Air-conditioning and the role of remittances," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    10. Zhu, Heng, 2016. "Remittance frequency, transaction fees and household impacts," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235561, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Junaid Ahmed & Mazhar Mughal & Stephan Klasen, 2018. "Great Expectations? Remittances and Asset Accumulation in Pakistan," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 507-532, April.
    2. Junaid Ahmed & Mazhar Mughal & Stephan Klasen, 2018. "Great Expectations? Remittances and Asset Accumulation in Pakistan," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 507-532, April.
    3. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Susan Pozo, 2014. "Remittance income uncertainty and asset accumulation," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-24, December.
    4. Miao, Jianjun & Wang, Neng, 2007. "Investment, consumption, and hedging under incomplete markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 608-642, December.
    5. Dmytro Hryshko, 2012. "Labor income profiles are not heterogeneous: Evidence from income growth rates," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(2), pages 177-209, July.
    6. Alejandro Drexler & Eduardo Engel & Rodrigo O. Valdés, 2001. "El cobre y estrategia fiscal óptima para Chile," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Felipe Morandé & Rodrigo Vergara & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Series Edit (ed.),Análisis Empírico del Ahorro en Chile, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 263-280, Central Bank of Chile.
    7. Huggett, Mark, 1997. "The one-sector growth model with idiosyncratic shocks: Steady states and dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 385-403, August.
    8. Ghosh, Atish R. & Ostry, Jonathan D., 1997. "Macroeconomic uncertainty, precautionary saving, and the current account," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 121-139, September.
    9. repec:ptu:bdpart:r201610 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Roberto Bande & Dolores Riveiro, 2013. "Private Saving Rates and Macroeconomic Uncertainty: Evidence from Spanish Regional Data," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 44(3), pages 323-349.
    11. Leonardo Bonilla-Mejía, 2017. "Choques externos y remesas internacionales en las regiones de Colombia," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, vol. 35(84), pages 189-202, December.
    12. Petra Gerlach-Kristen & Rossana Merola, 2019. "Consumption and credit constraints: a model and evidence from Ireland," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 475-503, August.
    13. Ruixin Zhang & Lei Luo & Yuying Liu & Xinhong Fu, 2022. "Impact of Labor Migration on Chemical Fertilizer Application of Citrus Growers: Empirical Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-14, June.
    14. Baiardi, Donatella & Manera, Matteo & Menegatti, Mario, 2013. "Consumption and precautionary saving: An empirical analysis under both financial and environmental risks," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 157-166.
    15. Donatella Baiardi & Marco Magnani & Mario Menegatti, 2020. "The theory of precautionary saving: an overview of recent developments," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 513-542, June.
    16. Göbel, Kristin, 2012. "Remittances and Gender-Speci fic Employment Patterns in Peru - a longitudinal Analysis," VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century 65409, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. James Obben & Monique Waayer, 2011. "New Zealand's old‐age pension scheme and household saving," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(9), pages 767-788, August.
    18. Zhou, Yanfei, 2003. "Precautionary saving and earnings uncertainty in Japan: A household-level analysis," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 192-212, June.
    19. Xinhai Lu & Jiao Hou & Yifeng Tang & Ting Wang & Tianyi Li & Xupeng Zhang, 2022. "Evaluating the Impact of the Highway Infrastructure Construction and the Threshold Effect on Cultivated Land Use Efficiency: Evidence from Chinese Provincial Panel Data," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-20, July.
    20. Hua Lu & Hualin Xie & Qianru Chen & Jinfa Jiang, 2018. "Impact of Agricultural Labor Transfer and Structural Adjustment on Chemical Application: Comparison of Past Developments in the Ecological Civilization Pilot Zones of China and Their Future Implicatio," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-14, June.
    21. Zhou, Jingkui, 2013. "Uncertainty, inequality and consumption preferences in urban China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 308-322.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    household expenditures; uncertainty; international remittances; asset accumulation; Mexico;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7983. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.