UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE IMPACT OF REMITTANCES ON FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN SELECTED ASIAN COUNTRIES BY HUYNH THI MY CHI MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2016 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE IMPACT OF REMITTANCES ON FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN SELECTED ASIAN COUNTRIES A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By HUYNH THI MY CHI Academic Supervisor: DR. NGUYEN VAN NGAI HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2016 DECLARATION “This declaration is to certify that this thesis entitled “The Impact of Remittances on Financial Development in Selected Asian Countries” which is conducted and submitted by me in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of the Vietnam – The Netherlands Programme. The thesis constitutes only my original works and due supervision and acknowledgement have been made in the text to all materials used.” Huynh Thi My Chi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my greatest appreciation to persons who greatly supported and contributed to this thesis by supervision and encouragement. First of all, I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Assoc.
Nguyen Van Ngai, for his guidance, enthusiasm, support, dedication and invaluable comments and advices. It was my privilege to have his supervision. Without his encouragement and support, I would not have been able to complete this thesis. I am also very obliged to Prof.
Nguyen Trong Hoai, Dr. Pham Khanh Nam for their valuable comments and suggestions for my Concept Note and Thesis Research Design. My special thanks to Dr. Truong Dang Thuy for his encouragements, advices and enthusiasm to help me finish the thesis.
I would also like to thank all VNP staff for their diligent assistance. I am thankful to my friends from VNP who supported, encouraged and shared experiences for my thesis completion. Besides, my sincere thankfulness also goes to my company’s managers and colleagues who kindly and understandingly facilitated my master studying. Finally, I am most grateful to my family for their endless support and encouragements to me all the way through my journeys.
ABBREVIATIONS FDI : Foreign Direct Investment FEM : Fixed Effect Model GDP : Gross Domestic Product GDPPC : Gross Domestic Product Per Capita GMM : Generalized Method of Moments ODA : Official Development Assistant REM : Random Effect Model ABSTRACT Although the impact of remittances on economic growth and poverty has always been a controversial problem for researchers and policy makers as remittance inflow have been becoming one of the largest external capital sources for many countries, its direct effect on financial development merely attract more attention after the financial crisis of 2007-2008. In an effort to contribute to empirical studies on this issue, this study utilizes fixed effect, random effect and system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to investigate the direct impact of remittances on two dimensions of financial development comprising the percentage of domestic credit to private sector by banks and broad money to GDP in thirty-seven Asian countries during the period 1990-2014. Furthermore, this study also examines whether there are different effects of remittance inflows in high, middle and low-income countries in this area. The results show that an increase in remittances seems to have no impact on financial development in general while there are mix results regarding the different income groups of countries in Asia.
In particular, while no evidence on the impact of remittances on both measurements of financial development as the whole region are obtained in middle and low-income countries, there is a significant and positive effect of these flows on the ratio of domestic credit to private sector by banks to GDP despite an insignificant influence on broad money to GDP in high income countries. Keywords: Remittances, Financial development, Asia, Income Group. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES. LIST OF FIGURES.
Scope and data of the study. Structure of the study. 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEWS. Theory of remittances and financial development.
The concepts and channels of remittances. Definitions of financial development. The role of remittances in financial development. Other determinants of financial development.
15 CHAPTER 3: MODEL SPECIFICATION AND DATA. Pooled OLS model. Fixed effect model. Random effect model.
Tests for choosing sufficient model. The system generalized method of moment estimation. 28 CHAPTER 4: THE IMPACT OF REMITTANCES ON FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA. Overview of remittance inflows and financial development in Asia.
Overview of remittance inflows to Asia from 1990 to 2014. Overview of financial development in Asia from 1990 to 2014. 45 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMLICATIONS. Limitations and further researches.
APPENDIX II: THE REGRESSION RESULTS. LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: The definition and expected sign of variables .1: The summary statistics of variables .2: The correlation between variables .3: The results of tests for choosing models .4: The results of FEM with robust .5: The results of system GMM .6: Summary of the impact of remittances on financial development in Asia and different income groups by FEM and system GMM .50 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1: Remittances received by areas in the world from 1990 to 2014 (US$ billion) .2: Top 10 remittance recipient countries in 2014 (US$ billion) .3: Top 10 remittance recipient countries in 2014 (% GDP) .4: Remittances to areas in Asia from 1990 to 2014 (US$ billion) .5: Remittances received by income groups in the world from 1990 to 2014 (US$ billion).6: Remittances received by income groups in Asia from 1990 to 2014 ($US billion).7: Domestic credit to private sector by banks (% of GDP) in Asia from 1990 to 2014 .8: Broad money as % of GDP in Asia from 1990 to 2014 .9: The average ratio of domestic credit to private sector by banks to GDP across income groups in Asia (%) .10: The average ratio of broad money as % of GDP across income groups in Asia .11: Correlation between domestic credit to private sector by banks (%GDP) and remittance inflows (%GDP) and other controlling variables .12: Correlation between broad money (%GDP) and remittance inflows (%GDP) and other controlling variables. Problem statement Together with the augmentations of migration flows in recent decades, remittances - money sent by migrants to home countries - have grown rapidly and appeared to surpass main conventional channels like official development assistant (ODA), private capital (Dilshad, 2013). According to the data from World Bank, in 2014, personal remittances recorded worldwide are up to one- third of foreign direct investment (FDI) and more than three times as large as the sum of ODA and official aids, from US$ 67 billion in 1990 to over US$ 533 billion.
Moreover, while foreign direct investment (FDI) fluctuates wildly during the period from 2000 to 2014, ODA and other external sources remain either unchanged or even decrease substantially; remittances keep its routine to accelerate stably over time. In particular, officially recorded remittances worldwide declined the first time in 2009 since 2000. Nevertheless, the decrease in remittance inflows by nearly 5 percent in 2009 compared to the remittance amount in 2008 due to global financial recession was trivial, in comparison with a 45 percent decrease in FDI in the same year. After that, while remittances have been totally recovered and continued to rise, FDI already fell twice in 2012 by nearly 10 percent and in 2014 by 20 percent.
As the stability and increment of remittance inflows has drawn enormous attention from researchers and policy makers in recent decades, a strong wave of papers and studies have dug into links between these flows and various aspects of economic development. However, while most investigations have attempted to figure out effects of remittances on growth, poverty, education, less effort has been spent for studying the linkage between remittance inward flows and financial development, which has been documented to foster economic growth and reduce poverty by literature extensively (Goldsmith, 1969; Bencivenga and Smith, 1991; King and Levine, 1993; Beck, Demirguc- 1 Kunt and Levine, 2004), across recipient countries despite their important contribution in total external financial sources. Moreover, various perspectives relating to this relationship argue different channels via which remittance flows may affect financial sectors, and empirical studies examining the impact of remittances on financial development also demonstrate inconsistent outcomes across countries and areas. On the one view, these flows may enhance financial development if formal financial channels are utilized in order to conduct transactions relating to remittances, recipients are acknowledged financial services; thereby permitting banks to get acquainted or approach unbanked recipients.
At the same time, that other financial products might be need if recipients prefer to store surplus income fosters the development of banking products and services. (Orozco and Fedewa, 2006; Gupta, Pattillo and Wagh, 2009; Aggarwal et al., 2011; Demigüç-Kunt et al. Furthermore, playing as a collateral role, remittance flows may enlarge bank willingness to provide loans for families with stable remittances. Even in the case remittances cannot become sufficient collateral, overall credit might still surge through recipient communities due to the incremental loanable funds as a result of remittances deposited to banks (Chami et al.
On the other view, remittances might impede the development of financial sectors if remittance inflows loosen recipients’ budget constraints and allow them to lower their demand for outside credit (Martínez, Mascaró and Moizeszowicz, 2008; Brown et al. Recipients might also consider remittances as additional income and utilize most of them for consumption, or their distrust of financial sectors might discourage them to deposit money to banks, therefore no need for financial products and no increase in bank deposits (Chami et al. As a result, whether, how and to what extent remittances impact financial developments in remittance recipient countries 2 are still complicated issues, hence the need for more studies to investigate these effects. In an effort to address the relationship between remittances and the development of financial sector in Asia, this study utilized a panel data from 1990 to 2014 for thirty-seven Asian countries and different econometric methods.
In particular, the linkage of personal remittances and financial development’s indicators comprising domestic credit to private sector provided by banking system and broad money are analyzed with fixed effect, random effect and system Generalized Method of Moments method. Furthermore, based on the level of country’s income which is classified by World Bank, this study also examines whether there are different effects of remittance inflows in high, middle and low-income countries in this area. Research objectives This study is conducted in an attempt to: Analyze the trend of remittance inflows and the situations of domestic credit to private sector provided by banks and broad money in Asia region, Access the impact of remittances on financial development in Asia in general, Evaluate different impacts of remittance flows on financial development in different income-groups of countries in Asia. From the findings, this study will propose recommendations in order to foster the effects of remittance inflows on financial development in Asian remittance recipient countries.
Scope and data of the study This research investigates whether remittances have significant influence on financial development for Asian countries due to many reasons. First, remittances flowing to Asia have accelerated substantially in the recent decade 3 and captured nearly 50% total remittance inflows in the world. Especially many middle and low income countries have taken large parts in both numerical value and percentage of Gross domestic product (GDP) in the amount of remittances flowing to this area; nonetheless, the development impact of remittances on financial sectors has not been commensurately analyzed in this area. Second, researches on studying the impact of remittances on financial development are solely officially conducted for separate country or a part of Asia.