Are remittances insurance? Evidence from rainfall shocks in the Philippines (Anglais)

Several facts motivate this study. First, life in developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk, such as crop and income loss due to natural disasters (weather, insect infestations, and fire) and civil conflict. Second, international migration and...  Voir la suite Several facts motivate this study. First, life in developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk, such as crop and income loss due to natural disasters (weather, insect infestations, and fire) and civil conflict. Second, international migration and remittance flows are substantial and growing. Between 1965 and 2000, individuals living outside their country of birth grew from 2.2 to 2.9 percent of the world population, totaling 175 million people in 2000. The remittances that these migrants send to their countries of origin are an important but poorly understood type of international financial flow. This article examines a mechanism for coping with shocks ex post on which previous micro-level studies have not focused: remittances from family members overseas. At the international level, it is commonly posited that remittance flows from overseas buffer economic shocks in migrants' home countries, but there have been relatively few empirical tests of this claim with micro-level household data. Related research on the role of domestic migration in pooling risk within extended families includes Lucas and Stark (1985), Rosenzweig and Stark (1989), and Paulson (2000).  Réduire