Remittances as pure or precautionary investment? Risk, savings and return migration

Matthieu Delpierre and Bertrand Verheyden

No 2010-39, LISER Working Paper Series from Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)

Abstract: This paper provides a theory of migrants’ decisions to remit and save under uncertainty in connection with future location decisions. We show that the impact of remittances on the risk faced by the migrant is more complex than usually acknowledged. On the one hand, their effect on aggregate risk is non-monotonic. On the other hand, their impact on the geographical location of risk might be counter-intuitive, as remittances increase the migrant’s exposure to risk in the origin country. Also, marginal returns to remittances may be increasing, at least locally, due to the endogeneity of the future location. Interior solutions are therefore not guaranteed, and liquidity constraints faced by migrants may be binding. Finally, undocumented migrants are shown to be more likely to remit than legal migrants.

Keywords: return migration; remittances; risk; investment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D80 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2010-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:irs:cepswp:2010-39

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