Migration as a Strategy for Household Finance: A Research Agenda on Remittances, Payments, and Development- Working Paper 354

Michael Clemens
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Timothy N. Ogden and Michael A. Clemens

No 354, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: It is time to fundamentally reframe the research agenda on remittances, payments, and development. We describe many of the research questions that now dominate the literature and why they lead us to uninformative answers. We propose reasons why these questions dominate, the most important of which is that researchers tend to view remittances as states do (as windfall income) rather than as families do (as returns on investment). Migration is, among other things, a strategy for financial management in poor households: location is an asset, migration an investment. This shift of perspective leads to much more fruitful research questions that have been relatively neglected. We suggest 12 such questions.

Keywords: migration; finance; global development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 F24 F30 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2014-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:354

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