Neither by Land nor by Sea: The Rise of Electronic Remittances during an Emergency

Lelys Dinarte Diaz, David Jaume, Hernan Winkler and Eduardo Medina

Brazilian Review of Econometrics, 2026, vol. 43, issue 2

Abstract: Despite concerns that the COVID-19 economic collapse would torpedo international remittances, formal remittances to several developing countries ballooned early in the pandemic. This increase might, however, have reflected a shift from informal channels to formal ones rather than a change in actual flows. This paper employs Mexican data to explore this and finds that remittance channels did change. The rise in formal inflows was larger among municipalities that were previously more reliant on informal channels (for example, near a border crossing). Households there also experienced a disproportionate increase in bank accounts opened after lockdown measures. The paper also rules out hypotheses related to the US Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and altruism.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://periodicos.fgv.br/bre/article/view/93875 (text/html)

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sbe:breart:v:43:y:2026:i:2:a:93875

Access Statistics for this article

Brazilian Review of Econometrics is currently edited by Daniel Monte

More articles in Brazilian Review of Econometrics from Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Núcleo de Computação da FGV EPGE ().