Does altruism matter for remittances?

Alexis Antoniades, Ganesh Seshan (), Roberto Weber and Robertas Zubrickas

Oxford Economic Papers, 2018, vol. 70, issue 1, 225-242

Abstract: We provide a direct test of the impact of altruism on remittances. From a sample of Indian migrant workers in Qatar, we elicit the propensity to share with others from their responses in a dictator game and use it as a proxy for altruism. For the entire sample, we find that altruism does not seem to matter. However, we document a strong positive relationship between altruism and remittances for a subset of migrants with a loan obligation, whereas indirect tests of altruism, typically used in the literature, would fail to establish this relationship. We explain the role of loan obligations with a standard remittance model extended with reference-dependent preferences.

JEL-codes: D81 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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