In a recent study, Chami et al. (2003) suggested that remittances can have a negative impact on economic growth of the receiving country by diminishing the work effort of the migrants' relatives.Subsequently, Giuliano and Ruiz-Arranz (2009) found that this moral hazard effect emerges only when financial development is low. In this paper, we introduce a new indicator of financial development measuring the efficiency domestic banking system and show that the impact of remittances on economic growth is negative (positive) in countries where bank efficiency is low (high). This complementarity result is robust to controls for other financial development and institutional quality indicators.

This paper examines how international remittances are affected by structural characteristics, macroeconomic conditions, and adverse shocks in both source and recipient economies. We exploit a novel, rich panel data set, covering bilateral remittances from 103 Italian provinces to 107 developing countries over the period 2005-2011. We find that remittances are negatively correlated with the business cycle in recipient countries, and increase in response to adverse exogenous shocks, such as natural disasters or large declines in the terms of trade. Remittances are positively correlated with economic conditions in the source province. Nevertheless, in the presence of similar negative shocks to both source and recipient economies, remittances remain counter-cyclical with respect to the recipient country.

This paper examines how international remittances are affected by structural characteristics, macroeconomic conditions, and adverse shocks in both source and recipient economies. We exploit a novel, rich panel data set, covering bilateral remittances from 103 Italian provinces to 107 developing countries over the period 2005-2011. We find that remittances are negatively correlated with the business cycle in recipient countries, and increase in response to adverse exogenous shocks, such as natural disasters or large declines in the terms of trade. Remittances are positively correlated with economic conditions in the source province. Nevertheless, in the presence of similar negative shocks to both source and recipient economies, remittances remain counter-cyclical with respect to the recipient country.

Recent studies indicate that the effect of migrants' remittances on the economic growth of receiving countries depends negatively on the level of development of the domestic financial sector. In this paper, we introduce a new indicator of financial development to measure the efficiency of the domestic banking system, and find the existence of complementarity between remittances and bank efficiency in economic growth, such that remittances promote growth only in countries whose banks function well. This result is robust to controls for other traditional measures of financial depth and institutional quality indicators.

We estimate a remittance model in which we address endogeneity and reverse causality relationships between immigrants' remittances, pre-transfer income and consumption. In order to take into account the fact that a large share of individuals do not remit, instrumental variable variants of the double-hurdle and Heckit selection models are proposed and estimated by Limited Information ML; semiparametric extensions are considered as robustness checks. Our results for a sample of recent immigrants to Australia show that endogeneity is substantial and that estimates obtained by the methods previously employed in the literature may be misleading if given a behavioral interpretation.

This paper examines how international remittances are affected by structural characteristics, macroeconomic conditions, and adverse shocks in both source and recipient economies. We exploit a novel, rich panel data set, covering bilateral remittances from 103 Italian provinces to 107 developing countries over the period 2005-2011. We find that remittances are negatively correlated with the business cycle in recipient countries, and increase in response to adverse exogenous shocks, such as natural disasters or large declines in the terms of trade. Remittances are positively correlated with economic conditions in the source province. Nevertheless, in the presence of similar negative shocks to both source and recipient economies, remittances remain counter-cyclical with respect to the recipient country.

BACKGROUNDAlthough a growing body of migration literature has focused on the determinants of migrants' plans to return to the home country, the role major life events play in return migration intention -including transitions and turning points, key concepts of the life course approach -has barely been examined. OBJECTIVEWe address the following research question: What are the effects of family, work, and health events on the return intentions of first-and second-generation Turks living in Germany? METHODSWe answer this research question using longitudinal data of first-and secondgeneration Turkish migrants who participated in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) study between 1984 and 2012. RESULTSThe results for first-generation Turkish migrants show that entering the empty-nest stage, becoming unemployed, and becoming employed in Germany increase the likelihood of intending to return, while partnership dissolution and childbirth act as a deterrent. Partnership formation, entering retirement, and health deterioration neither trigger nor deter the intention to return. For the second generation, becoming unemployed increases the intention to return, while partnership formation has the

We estimate a behavioural model of household's remittances to investigate to what extent the level of financial development in the home country affects decisions on whether and how much to remit.