بارش، توسعه مالی و وجوه ارسالی: شواهدی از کشورهای جنوب صحرای آفریقا

We use annual variations in rainfall to examine the effects that exogenous, transitory income shocks have on remittances in a panel of 41 Sub-Saharan African countries during the period 1970–2007. Our main finding is that on average rainfall shocks have an insignificant contemporaneous effect on remittances. However, the marginal effect is significantly decreasing in the share of domestic credit to GDP. So much so, that at high levels of credit to GDP rainfall shocks have a significant negative effect on remittances, while at low levels of credit to GDP the effect of rainfall on remittances is significantly positive.

For many developing countries and most importantly for Sub-Saharan African countries, remittances constitute a significant source of foreign exchange and income. According to the World Bank, “tens of millions of African migrants scattered around the world could mobilize more than $100 billion a year to help develop the impoverished continent”. The World Bank says “there's around $40 billion a year in officially recorded remittances—cash sent by migrants back to their home countries—and an estimated $50 billion in diaspora savings that could be leveraged for low-cost project finance”.1 Given the economic significance of remittances to the developing world, the causes of remittances to these countries is an issue of key importance for both academics who study the determinants of economic growth in the developing world and economic policy makers. In particular, for the economic policy response to transitory income shocks it is key to understand whether the response of remittances to transitory income shocks is positive, negative, or zero

We examined in this paper the effects that year-to-year variations in rainfall have on remittances in a panel of 41 Sub-Saharan African countries during the period 1970–2007. Our main finding was that the effects of rainfall on remittances are significantly decreasing in countries' GDP share of domestic credit to the private sector. This effect is so strong, that at low levels of domestic credit to the private sector improved rainfall conditions have a significant positive effect on remittances. However, rainfall has a significant negative effect on remittances in countries with relatively high levels of credit to the private sector, suggesting that in these countries there exists a counter-cyclical relationship between income and remittance flows. Our finding regarding a heterogeneous effect of rainfall on remittance flows highlights the role of domestic credit markets in shaping the response of remittance flows to country-specific income shocks.