Do Remittances Reduce Aid Dependency?

Aid has been for decades an important source of financing for developing countries, but more recently remittance flows have increased rapidly and are beginning to dwarf aid flows. This paper investigates how remittances affect aid flows, and how this relationship varies depending on the channel of t...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Le Goff, Maelan
Other Authors: Kpodar, Kangni
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 2011
Series:IMF Working Papers
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 01857nmm a2200241 u 4500
001 EB000926660
003 EBX01000000000000000720256
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 150128 ||| eng
020 |a 9781463923259 
100 1 |a Le Goff, Maelan 
245 0 0 |a Do Remittances Reduce Aid Dependency?  |c Maelan Le Goff, Kangni Kpodar 
260 |a Washington, D.C.  |b International Monetary Fund  |c 2011 
300 |a 31 pages 
700 1 |a Kpodar, Kangni 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b IMF  |a International Monetary Fund 
490 0 |a IMF Working Papers 
028 5 0 |a 10.5089/9781463923259.001 
856 4 0 |u http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2011/246/001.2011.issue-246-en.xml  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
082 0 |a 330 
520 |a Aid has been for decades an important source of financing for developing countries, but more recently remittance flows have increased rapidly and are beginning to dwarf aid flows. This paper investigates how remittances affect aid flows, and how this relationship varies depending on the channel of transmission from remittances to aid. Buoyant remittances could reduce aid needs when human capital improves and private investment takes off. Absent these, aid flows could still drop as remittances may dampen donors' incentive to scale up aid. Concurrently, remittances could be positively associated with aid if migrants can influence aid policy in donor countries. Using an instrumental variable approach with panel data for a sample of developing countries from 1975-2005, the baseline results show that remittances actually increase aid dependency. However, a refined model controlling for the channels of transmission from remittances to aid reveals that remittances lead to lower aid dependency when they are invested in human and physical capital rather than consumed