This paper contributes to the growing yet limited literature on intra-European remittances, focusing on ten countries: four Nordic countries, three Baltic countries, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. We find that amount of remittances is positively associated with the volatility of the exchange rate in the residence country vs euro, suggesting that exchange rate risk aversion is one of the drivers of remitting behavior. We use the World Bank estimates of bilateral remittances for 2010–2017 and distinguish naturalized migrants from those holding the citizenship of their country of origin. The positive association between remittances and the volatility of the exchange rate is confirmed by a wide range of panel data methods, including Poisson models with multiple absorbed fixed effects, loglinear mixed effects models, as well as generalized least square estimates for models with heteroskedastic and correlated panels. The control variables include the stock of migrants, PPP-adjusted per capita income in the migrants’ country of residence and country of origin, and time fixed effects. More detailed specifications reveal that the above-mentioned association is positive only where/when at least one-third of the stock of working-age migrants are females, otherwise remittances are negatively associated with the volatility of the exchange rate in the residence country vs euro. This is consistent with an assumption that female migrants try to avoid the exchange rate risk by remitting more from countries (and/or in times) with higher exchange rate volatility, while male migrants are willing to accept this risk waiting for a better exchange rate.
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Exchange rate risk and gender differences in remitting behavior of intra- European migrants
Published:
13 June 2025
by MDPI
in The 1st International Online Conference on Risk and Financial Management
session Machine Learning in Economics and Finance
Abstract:
Keywords: Exchange rate risk; gender differences in risk-taking; remittances; intra-European migrants
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