Newly available data show that officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries reached $338 billion in 2008, higher than our previous estimate of $328 billion. Based on monthly and quarterly data released by some central banks and in line with the World Bank's global economic...

Newly available data show that remittance flows to developing countries reached $328 billion in 2008, larger than previous estimate of $305 billion. Remittances grew rapidly during 2007 and 2008, but have slowed down in many corridors since the last quarter of 2008. In line with a recent...

The outlook for remittances for the rest of 2008 and 2009-10 remains as uncertain as the outlook for global growth, oil and non-oil commodity prices, and currency exchange rates. In the past, remittances have been noted to be stable or even counter-cyclical, during an economic downturn in the...

This brief provides an overview and lessons on how countries of origin governments can play a major role in protecting their migrants abroad through migrant welfare funds. It draws from a study by the Migration Policy Institute, on the Philippine Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), a...

This note provides a glimpse of the institutions built to manage migration in the Philippines. It describes how one country of origin government helps its migrants by regulating overseas employment recruitment, informing migrants of available resources abroad through a mandatory deployment...

Revised estimates show that remittance flows to developing countries were $251 billion in 2007, up 11 percent from 2006. This Brief discusses the slowdown in remittance flows to Mexico in the first part of 2008. Remittances to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (El Salvador, Honduras,...

Along with international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), international migration is an important channel for the transmission of technology and knowledge. However, the direction and scale of technology flows that result from international migration are less clear than for FDI and...

This note describes broad regional and country specific trends in remittance flows worldwide, and highlights some structural changes that will affect remittance flows in the future. The main messages are: remittance flows to Latin America and the Caribbean slowed on the back of a weakening U.S....

In nominal dollar terms Latin America and the Caribbean region remains the largest recipient of (recorded) remittances 2006. However, as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) remittances are highest in the Middle East and North Africa region. Due to a lack of data, remittance flows to...