Remittances and Development in Latin America

Pablo Acosta (), Cesar A. Calderon (), Pablo Fajnzylber and Humberto Lopez ()

The World Economy, 2006, vol. 29, issue 7, pages 957-987

Abstract: Flows of workers' remittances have become a major source of external finance for developing countries and are particularly important in Latin America and the Caribbean, where they are estimated to have reached $40 billion in 2004. Not surprisingly, academics, policymakers and development practitioners in general have been devoting increasing attention to the potential development impact that these flows may have on receiving countries. This paper contributes to this debate along four dimensions. First, it reviews the evolution of remittances flows to Latin America, using Balance of Payments data, and compares these statistics with estimates of remittances income based on Household Surveys. Second, the paper describes the varying profile of remittances recipients in ten Latin American countries. Third, the paper reviews the few macro- and microeconomic studies that have estimated the impact of remittances on poverty and inequality. Finally, the paper expands some of the existing works to investigate the extent to which that impact is different in Latin America and varies across countries in the region. Copyright 2006 The Authors Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Date: 2006
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9701.2006.00831.x link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:worlde:v:29:y:2006:i:7:p:957-987

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0378-5920

Access Statistics for this article

The World Economy is edited by David Greenaway

More articles in The World Economy from Blackwell Publishing
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().