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...

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...

Using Mexico's 2002 wave of the Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares (ENIGH), we find that international remittances raise health care expenditures. Approximately 6 pesos of every 100 peso increment in remittance income are spent on health. The sensitivity of health care...

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...

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...

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, 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...

In this paper we examine how remittances relate to the exchange rate, natural disasters and foreign aid in developing economies. By using panel VAR methods we are able to compensate for both data limitations and endogeneity among variables. We find that while foreign aid tends to appreciate the...