External financial flows and institutional building: the impact of remittances on civil liberties in aid dependent countries

ABSTRACT

We analyse the impact of both official development assistance and migrant transfers on civil liberties in developing countries, using a sample of 63 countries over the period 1984–2004. We found that while both larger migrant transfers and larger inflows of aid are associated with stronger civil liberties, workers remittances have a higher impact than aid with no interdependency between the two.

KEYWORDS:

• Remittances
• civil liberties
• official development assistance
• instrumental variables

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E02
• F24
• F35
• O11

Disclosure statement

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect any official policy or position of the African Development Bank Group.

Notes

¹ Although these channels are not tested empirically in the research.

² Countries included in sample are: Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Congo (Rep.), Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jamaica, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Uruguay and Zambia.

³ Please see Annexe 1 for descriptive statistics.