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ABSTRACT

Labour migrants' remittances are a rapidly growing phenomenon in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The size and growth of remittances in the countries of the recipients brought the issue under the scrutiny of researchers and policymakers. In this paper we investigate the main factors behind the growing volume of remittances in the post-Soviet space. By applying panel data techniques we found that a reduction in transaction costs and a depreciation of the currency in the host country were the main factors that influenced the growth of recorded remittances. The size of transaction costs remains a significant predictor of the volume of formal remittances, even after correcting for endogeneity using an instrumental variable estimator. The inverse relationship between transaction costs and recorded remittances suggests that migrants switch from informal channels to formal channels to send remittances when costs are low. Thus lower transaction costs may help curb the proportion of informal flows and lead to increased use of remittances in the formal economy.

6. Conclusion

One of the attractive characteristics of remittances is the fact that these transfers are unilateral and do not require an explicit payback. However, another broadly accepted consensus – that remittances are a relatively stable source of foreign exchange flow – may not hold. The recent drastic cutback in remittances as a result of the Russian economic slowdown hurt those economies of the former Soviet Union that were dependent on the Russian remittances especially badly. This observation should warn against complacency among economic policymakers in the transition and less developed economies. As remittances might be rather volatile, policymakers should support remittances with sound macroeconomic policies and a favourable business environment in order to maximize the potential benefits of this inflow. One way of increasing gains from remittances is to create incentives to channel remittances through the formal sector of the economy so that foreign exchange flows reach transparent and legitimate investment projects instead of letting informal sector activities use these funds. An important finding of this paper is that formal remittances are negatively associated with remittance transfer costs. This result, and other research in the field, such as that by Freund and Spatafora (2008), hints at the possibility that a statistically significant negative correlation between remittances and remittance transfer fees may lead to channelling of funds to the formal sector at the cost of shrinking informal sector inflows. Obviously, to achieve this goal, prudent, efficient regulation of the financial system and a favourable business environment must be in place (Akimov and Dollery, 2008).