Are imports and remittances cointegrated for the Central and Eastern European countries?

ABSTRACT

In this article, we investigate the existence of long-run common trends between imports and remittances in 11 Central and Eastern European countries which are part of the European Union. Using the Engle–Granger two-step procedure, we determine that for all countries in our sample there are no long-run common trends (no cointegration) between imports and remittances. However, the results are mixed when running a Granger causality test. For nine countries, we can establish either a bidirectional or unidirectional Granger causality, indicating that past values of one variable have predictive content on the other variable. In two countries, there is no Granger causality between imports and remittances.

KEYWORDS:

• Imports
• remittances
• cointegration
• Granger causality
• Central and Eastern Europe

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• F20
• F29
• F30

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.