The objective is to present our contribution to the theoretical literature through a simple theoretical model dealing with the effect of remittances on the labor market of the origin countries and on the other hand to test this relationship empirically in the case of Tunisia. The methodology used consists of estimating a panel of the nine main destinations of the Tunisian migrants in Europe between 1997 and 2017. The empirical results show that the main factors explaining the decision to emigrate are the economic factors related mainly to the income differential, the demographic factors related to the differential age structure of the origin and host populations, and the cultural factors linked basically to the language mastery. Indeed, the migrant stocks are one of the main determinants of the remittances to Tunisia. But there are other variables that do not lack importance such as the economic conditions linked by the host countries. This shows that Tunisian migrants react more to economic conditions in European countries than in Tunisia. The economic situation of European countries dominates the number of emigrants as an explanatory factor for the amount of transfers from Tunisian emigrants. Similarly, the results confirm that an increase in remittances significantly reduces the demand for employment and therefore increases the unemployment rate. This positive correlation reveals that the impact of demographic changes on the effect of remittances occurs through an increase in unemployment due to the aging of the population, which coincides with the case of Tunisia going through a demographic transition period.
The paper analyses the role of remittances in alleviating the Gross domestic product (GDP) oscillations induced by a climate shock that is detected by irregular precipitation and annual temperature in the North African region between 1980 and 2016. By controlling endogeneity problems, we use the Panel Vector Autoregressive model (PVAR). Our results show on the one hand that the decline in precipitation and the increase in temperature have adverse consequences on the GDP per capita. On the other hand, remittances are a pathway of action towards macroeconomic stability of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. They are characterized by counter-cyclical patterns which increase the capacity of adaptation to meteorological changes in the recipient countries and also resistance to hazards. Therefore, the future policies must be more rigorously focused on adaptation policies and investing in green technologies that mitigate the long term negative consequences of climate transformations.
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