Remittances and banking sector breadth and depth: Evidence from Mexico

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Demirguec-Kunt, Asli; Cordova, Ernesto Lopez; Peria, Maria Soledad Martinez; Woodruff, Christopher
• 署名单位: The World Bank; Inter-American Development Bank; University of California System; University of California San Diego
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2010.04.002
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 229-241
• 关键词: remittances; financial development; Banking sector depth and breadth

摘要

Despite the importance of remittances to developing countries, their impact on banking sector breadth and depth in recipient countries has been largely unexplored. We examine this topic using municipality-level data on the fraction of households receiving remittances and on measures of banking breadth and depth for Mexico. We find that remittances are strongly associated with greater banking breadth and depth, increasing the number of branches and accounts per capita and the amount of deposits to GDP. These effects are significant both statistically and economically, and are robust to the potential endogeneity of remittances, inclusion of a wide range of controls and even municipal fixed effects specifications using an alternative panel data set from a sample of municipalities. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.