Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) on the Remittances Market: Money Transfer Activity and Savings Mobilisation

Ritha Sukadi Mata ()

No 09-022.RS, Working Papers CEB from Université Libre de Bruxelles, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Centre Emile Bernheim (CEB)

Abstract: This paper is a first attempt to empirically measure the impact of a money transfer activity on MFIs’ savings mobilisation. After analysing the opportunities for MFIs to succeed in transforming remittances receivers into clients, the paper empirically tests whether MFIs operating on the remittances market have a significantly higher level of savings than others, thanks to their money transfer activity. After building our variable of interest (a dummy for the money transfer activity) based on the Mixmarket website (for the regions of Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific, South Asia and Africa), we run a cross-section regression for the year 2006 between the “savings over assets” ratio as explained variable and a set of explaining variables, including our variable of interest. We find a positive and significant coefficient for the money transfer activity dummy.

Keywords: savings; migrants’ savings; remittances; microfinance institutions (MFIs); money transfer activity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 O15 O16 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mfd, nep-mig and nep-sea
Date: 2009-05
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http://www.solvay.edu/EN/Research/Bernheim/documents/wp09022.pdf First version, 2009 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sol:wpaper:09-022

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