Trends in workers' remittances: a worldwide overview

Abstract

Increasing economic integration around the world bestows workers' remittances a growing potential importance as a source of financing foreign transactions. This paper investigates trends in workers ' remittances in developed and less developed countries since the 1980s. Both the magnitude of workers' remittance flows, in comparison to some other major aggregates, such as gross domestic product and foreign direct investment flows, and the relative stability of workers' remittances reveal that policies to attract workers' remittances bear great importance for especially less developed economies.