Question

What are the strengths of remittances compared to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)?

Answer 1

Remittances are a major source of household income in many Asian, African, and Latin American countries. Households spend a significant portion of remittances on health and education. Given that human capital is one of the primary determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow, this study develops a model in which remittances are one of several determinants of the observed variation in FDI. The model is estimated using data from a group of 35 middle-income countries from Latin America, Asia–Pacific, and Africa. The estimated results ascribe no significance to remittances in explaining cross-country variation in FDI. However, geographically-disaggregated estimated results do establish a positive effect for African countries, no significant effect for Latin American countries, and a negative effect for the Asia–Pacific region.

Sustainable Development Goals have refocused attention on ways of providing external finance to support development. Because they have different motivations and work through different modalities, remittances, foreign direct investment (FDI), and official development assistance may be expected to have different consequences for economic growth. Existing empirical evidence suggests that both positive and negative effects are associated with each source of finance. We use both a dynamic panel model and a fixed effects model to calculate the overall effects of each source of finance in isolation and taken together over the period 1976–2015. We include a range of control variables to allow for other potential influences on economic growth. We disaggregate the effects across geographical regions and income levels to test for heterogeneity. We also undertake a series of robustness checks. A results suggest that FDI has a significant positive effect on economic growth, whereas remittances have a significant and negative effect. The effect of foreign aid is more ambiguous but is usually insignificant.