A panel data analysis of the growth effects of remittances

Many development economists believe that remittances by the migrant workers are an important source of long rum growth. Therefore, recent studies have investigated the indirect and direct effects remittances on the growth rates of the recipient countries. This paper analyses the strength of these effects with a common data set and with alternative methods of estimation. It is found that while the evidence supports the indirect effects of remittances, the direct growth effects of remittances seem to be insignificant.Remittances, Growth, Panel Data, System GMM

Can Macroeconomic Factors Explain Equity Returns in the Long Run? The Case of Jordan

There is a growing literature on how macroeconomic variables can have effects on equity returns in both developed and emerging stock markets. We test for the long run relationship between some key macroeconomic indicators and equity returns in Jordan. Using both GETS methodology and the ARDL approach to cointegration, we find that the trade surplus, foreign exchange reserves, the money supply and oil prices are important macroeconomic variables which have long run effects on the Jordanian stock market. The results are broadly consistent with similar studies carried out for other emerging economies.Macroeconomic Factors, Equity Returns, Cointegration, Emerging Market, Jordan.

Are the Direct and Indirect Growth Effects of Remittances Significant?

Development economists believe that migrant workers’ remittances are an important source of funds for long run growth. Therefore, recent studies have investigated the growth effects of remittances and reached different conclusions. In many such studies the growth of output is simply regressed on both remittances and the channels through which remittances affect growth. Thus there is no distinction between the indirect and direct growth effects of remittances and such specifications may give unreliable estimates because of the correlation between the channels and remittances. In this paper we make a distinction between the indirect and direct effects of remittances. Our model is estimated with panel data of 40 high remittance recipient countries and a system GMM panel data estimation method.Remittances, Growth, Panel Data, System GMM

Remittances and Poverty: Panel Evidence from High Remittance Economies

The growth effects of remittances are controversial, but their welfare effects are less so. This paper provides evidence on the effect of remittances on poverty in an unbalanced panel of 40 high remittances economies. The endogeneity issue, driven by the possibility that remittances and poverty may have bidirectional causality, is tackled by a system estimation technique using the seemingly unrelated regression estimator (SURE) that not only allows both to be jointly determined but also allows the error terms of the simultaneous equations to be contemporaneously correlated. Using bootstraps, heteroskedasticty robust standard errors of the SURE regressions are reported and the estimates show that remittances significantly reduce poverty. On the other hand, remittances decline with the wake of widespread poverty. There is consistent evidence that remittances also decline with increases in health index of the general population. However, improvements in the health outcomes of poor people are associated with more remittances. Finally, there is some limited evidence that remittances rise with increases in educational attainments of the general population, but fall as the poor people become more educated

Remittances and the real effective exchange rate

We examine the long-run relationship between remittances and the real exchange rate for less developed countries using a panel cointegration approach. We employ an innovative method for the measurement of the multilateral real effective exchange rate and we focus on high remittance economies. We find a small inelastic, but significant, long-run relationship which confirms a “Dutch disease” type effect. Short-run confirmation is given by a panel error correction model. Potential asymmetries in this relationship are explored using quantile regression analysis

The effect of female and male health on economic growth: cross-country evidence within a production function framework

It is widely believed by development economists that the role of human capital is one of the most fundamental determinants of economic growth. Sustained growth depends on the level of human capital whose stocks increase due to better education, higher levels of health, new learning and training procedure. The intuition that good health raises the level of human capital and has a positive effect on productivity and economic growth has been modelled by enodogenous growth theorists. But empirically ascertaining the causal relationship between health and growth is more difficult due to the possible existence of endogeneity between these two variables. We use a production function based approach and model the role of health as a regular factor of production. Additionally, we depart from all the previous literature by estimating the gender disaggregated effect of human health on economic growth. We adopt a constant return to scale production function that fits the data in the microeconometric literature on return to human capital. Using this particular production function, we disaggregate the measures of human capital by including male and female life expectancy and school enrolments. Allowing for the dynamics of TFP to be embedded in the production function we empirically test it in growth form using various estimators appropriate for our data. Our main finding is that male life expectancy has a positive effect on the growth of income while female life expectancy has a negative effect, controlling for unobserved time and country effects in a panel of 83 countries from 1960 - 2009. We use lag differences of life expectancy and school enrolments and lagged growth rates of other inputs as instruments for controlling the endogenity of health in the growth regressions. We check for the robustness of the results with use of ‘deletion diagnostics’ to identify influential observations and outliers. The results continue to show that male life expectancy has a positive effect on income growth while that of female has a negative effect

Sovereign country rating, growth volatility and financial crisis

Using monthly data from January 1996 up to May 2010 for a panel of 76 developed and emerging economies and adopting an instrumental variable estimation technique by correcting for both heterogeneity and endogeneity (correlation between the regressors and the idiosyncratic error) using the generalized two-stage least squares (G2SLS, EC2SLS) procedure method suggested by Balestra and Varadharajan-Krishnakumar (1987) and Baltagi (1995), this paper provides empirical evidence that an alternative channel via which growth volatility is reduced is through changes in sovereign country ratings. The paper also provides a new insight on the effect of global financial crisis (GFC) that it has contributed towards increased macroeconomic volatility by weakening this volatility reducing effect of sovereign country rating. Finally acknowledging the simultaneity between rating and volatility where output volatility may be a determining factor for sovereign country rating, the paper adopts a system approach and uses three stage least square (3SLS) estimator and finds that volatility reducing effect of country credit rating is robust. The channel via which sovereign rating changes affect growth volatility is through sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spread and its volatility