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This study estimates impact of remittances from internal migration on households' use of bank services in Vietnam.

This study uses data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey and the two-stage least squares method (2SLS).

The results show that receiving internal remittance increases households' probability of having bank accounts and using card services. However, these impacts are different between rural and urban areas.

The results of this study reveal the useful role of internal remittance in increasing the probability of households using bank services, thereby enhancing financial inclusion in Vietnam.

Different from the previous studies, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of internal remittance on the use of bank services in Vietnam at the household level. This paper targets internal migration because it is the main type of migration in Vietnam. Besides, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first one that compares the role of internal remittance on households' use of bank services in rural and urban areas in Vietnam.

The increase in volumes and circulation of internal and international remittances have become a substantial part of resource flow for economic development especially in developing countries with a significant impact on household welfare. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between remittances and savings mobilization.

Using the most recent wave of the Ghana Living Standard Survey data, the study accounts for the endogeneity in remittance receipts by employing treatment effect estimators, in addition to a probit model to establish the relationship between remittances and likelihood of savings.

The results suggest that receiving remittances significantly affects household’s propensity to save. Households that receive international remittances seem to have a slightly higher probability of savings compared to households that receive only domestic remittances.

From the literature, whereas the theoretical relationship between savings and remittances is mixed, it is also evident that the empirical relationship between remittances and savings has not been clearly established, especially in sub-Saharan African countries in general and Ghana in particular. The present study adds to the paucity in the literature in two main ways. First, the study provides empirical evidence on the relationship between remittances and savings by not only focusing on international remittances but also on internal remittances. Second, in sharp departure from other studies, the current study employs more robust empirical estimators in estimating the relationship between remittances and savings.

The paper examines the effect of internal remittances on the employment choices of household heads in rural Ghana.

The paper employs data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 6) of the Ghana Statistical Service. Due to issues of endogeneity of remittances in relation to labor supply, the paper adopts an instrumental variable approach in the analysis. First, employment choices are categorized into three: (1) wage/salary employment, (2) self-employment and (3) domestic/family employment. The relationship is then modeled as instrumental variable multinomial probit (IV-MNP). Secondly, employment choices are recategorized into two: farm employment and otherwise and modeled as instrumental variable probit (IV-PROBIT). The models are estimated via the conditional mixed process (CMP) estimation technique.

The results indicate that remittances have a negative effect on self-employment and a positive effect on domestic/family employment. Thus, remittances reduce participation in self-employment but increase participation in domestic/family employment. Furthermore, remittances have a negative effect on participation in farm employment. The results are robust to different measures of remittances: receipt of remittances (dummy) and remittance income.

The results suggest that remittances are used for consumption rather than investing in earning activities. In general, engaging in earning type of employment, whether farm and nonfarm employment will decline with receipt of remittances in rural Ghana. There is a need for policy attention with the increasing migration of people out of rural areas.

Prior to this study, little was known on the effect of internal remittances on labor supply decisions of remittance recipients in Ghana, particularly rural Ghana. This paper contributes significantly to filling this knowledge gap.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of illness-driven agriculture income shocks on remittance payments in Ghana using a nationally representative household pseudo-panel data set for 1991/1992, 1998/1999 and 2005/2006.

The two-stage least square instrumental variable technique is used. This is compared with the ordinary least squares estimator.

The author finds that households in Ghana use remittances to protect themselves from negative agriculture income shocks. The study further reveals that the protection is resilient in female-headed households.

The question of remittances as a safety net mechanism is interesting, but the limitation is the challenges involving the counterfactual setup in studying the effects of endogenous migration choices.

The study provides that, as far as microeconomic factors are concerned, remittances increase in times of negative agriculture income shocks attributed to illness in Ghana.

The finding points to the fact that remittance payments play an essential role as an informal safety net during illness-driven agriculture income shock especially for female-headed households in Ghana. This has an important implication for poverty reduction in Ghana.

It provides an empirical test of the claim that remittance flows buffer idiosyncratic shock with micro-level household data that incorporates both internal and international remittances. The paper introduces gender dimension into idiosyncratic shocks’ impact. Also, the data set makes it possible to provide a reliable set of agriculture income shock estimates.

This paper aims to analyse the differential impact of foreign and domestic remittances on household expenditure shares.

This study uses micro-data from a very large and detailed income-expenditure survey in Mexico and runs consumption-share Engel equations to estimate income (expenditure) elasticities for different consumption goods groups. Trying to account for the standard problems of endogeneity, this paper considers only nuclear households with migrant fathers and compare households that receive remittances from abroad, from within Mexico and those not receiving remittances.

This study finds that international remittances have a larger impact on the expenditure shares of women’s clothes, insurances and durable goods, while domestic remittances have a larger impact on the share of income dedicated to food, health and education.

Based on the results, differences in consumption shares between families receiving foreign and domestic remittances might depend not only on the relative size of the income transfer but also on the nature of the transfer and the sender’s capacity to monitor in person the use of those remittances. The results indicate that households that receive remittances from abroad present higher shares of consumption of some goods the literature commonly associates with the mothers’ preferences.

The economic literature on labor migration has incorporated insights from various disciplines with regard to content and method, although the representation of migrants has not fully moved away from the neoliberal, market-dominated framework. This paper addresses the issue of women migrant workers using the particular example of Sri Lankan migrant women workers to the Middle East. It aims to highlight the need for more diversity in economic research without which conceptual representation, as well as empirical reach, is limited.

After a brief overview of the representation of migrants in economic literature, I develop the concept of vulnerability. I refer to qualitative and quantitative analyses on Sri Lankan migrant women workers to the Middle East from a variety of disciplines in order to differentiate the “vulnerable,” that is, the workers in need of protection, from the “vulnerabilities.” The latter concept refers to the debilitating effects on workers, produced by market forces, which are often perpetuated by underlying assumptions, as well as policies. A broader, inter-disciplinary perspective, which considers the agency of women, can go a long way toward removing some of the limitations and preconceptions ingrained in most economic representation. This in turn could help to improve the protection of the vulnerable and empower them to better face market forces.

This study aims to answer if inter-state migrants in India play a more active role than their intra-state counterparts in labor force participation and entrepreneurship.

A recursive bivariate probit model is used with an instrumental variable (IV) of the total of inter-state migrants in a city over their historical numbers to tackle the endogeneity issue of the migration decision of the migrants.

Inter-state migrants did a better job than their intra-state counterparts in labor force participation and female inter-state migrants did a better job than their counterparts in wage employment and being day laborers.

The data are from IPUMS and there is no updated nationwide data regrading migration and employment for recent years.

A randomized controlled trail can be carried out near the borders of two states where there are both significant amounts of inter-state and intra-state migrants.

The government and international organizations shall focus on cultivating the skills of the female migrants as well as encouraging the entrepreneurship of both types of migrants.

The study focus is on the comparison between intra- and inter-state migrants based on nationwide survey data and the usage of recursive bivariate model and an effective Instrumental Variable.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of mobile money access on internal remittances received, per capita consumption expenditure and welfare of household in Ghana.

The study used data from the latest round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7) and employed the propensity score matching technique to estimate average treatment effect between users and non-users of mobile money transfer services.

The study finds that using mobile money is welfare enhancing, particularly for poor households and the channel by which it impacts on welfare is through higher internal remittances received and per capita expenditure. The results from the average treatment effect indicate that mobile money users receive significantly higher remittances and consequently spend averagely higher on consumption than non-users.

Although the data employed in this study is limited to one country, the findings support the financial inclusion role and developmental impact of mobile money transfer services. Hence, mobile money transfer services should be promoted and facilitated by the telecommunication and financial sector regulators.

In addition to making original contribution to the literature on the welfare impact of mobile money, the study's use of the propensity score matching is unique.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze differential consumption patterns of Pakistani migrant households resulting from foreign and domestic remittances.

Using the Working-Leser model and a number of matching techniques, the authors analyze a representative household survey carried out in 2010–2011 to compare various expenditure categories of recipient and non-recipient households across different income brackets.

Results show that foreign remittances lead to significant consumption changes. Contrary to the widely held view, remittances do not raise the budget share on consumer goods and recreation, while allocation on education increases substantially. Households receiving domestic remittances also reflect strong focus on human capital with significantly higher shares of health and education. Recipients of international transfers living below one dollar a day spend proportionally more on food compared with their non-recipient counterparts whereas their education and health budget shares are not dissimilar.

The positive effect of remittances on expenditures on human capital coupled with a lack of evidence suggesting an increase in the share of conspicuous spending resulting from remittances highlights the beneficial role that remittances play in a developing country.

Extant literature lacks consensus on whether migrant remittances should be treated as a temporary or permanent source of household income. In this study, the authors argue and empirically show that the two need not be mutually exclusive, and may co-exist depending on the nature of remittances and household characteristics.

This article provides a formal framework for the analysis of the impact of international migration in the presence of remittances. The discussion differentiates between temporary and permanent migration and between the effects of remittances that raise investment and those that raise consumption spending in the source country. Changes in prices, income distribution and national welfare are examined.