Abstract
Despite the increasing importance of financial and social remittances to developing countries, their impact on home-country venture-investing environments has been largely overlooked. I develop a framework grounded in transaction costs economics and social knowledge theories to investigate relationships between remittances and home-country (1) capital availability, (2) new business creation, and (3) economic internationalization. My framework also accounts for individual and collective immigrant attributes that may moderate the impact of remittances on these alternative indicators of the venture investment environment. Analyses of immigrant remittances to 61 developing countries from 2002–2007 indicate that they increase general and more narrowly defined venture capital availability as well as broader openness to international trade. Remittances also increase new business start-up rates when the developing country's public sector is sufficiently small. Positive venture-funding effects of remittances are magnified when coming from immigrants living in highly concentrated communities, but are diminished when coming from highly educated immigrants. Overall, results suggest that developing-country immigrants of varying backgrounds play an important role in venture funding, founding and integration with the world economy.
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Notes
The World Bank (World Bank, 2006: 106–107) IMF definitions for these three components. The first and usually largest component, workers’ remittances, is current private transfers from migrant workers considered residents of the host country to recipients in their country of origin. If migrants live in the host country for a year or longer, they are considered residents, regardless of their immigration status. If migrants have lived in the host country for less than a year (and are not students, diplomats, military personnel, medical patients, tourists, etc.) their income becomes part of a second and usually smaller component, compensation of employees. The third component is also usually the smallest: migrant transfers are offset entries in the balance of payments to the provision of a resource such as grants and gifts in kind or financial form. For more on remittance accounting and compilation methods and issues, see IMF (2009), Nyberg-Sørenson (2004), Reinke (2007) and World Bank (2006).
Measuring the flow of social remittances to developing countries is more difficult than measuring financial remittances, which organizations such as the World Bank have been measuring across countries since the late 1990s. For the purposes of this study I assume that social and financial remittances flow together, and often use the term “remittances” to refer to both flows. In measurement for empirical study, we use financial remittances to proxy for social remittances as well.
For example, survey evidence reported by Amuedo-Dorantes, Bansak, and Pozo (2004) indicates that Mexican immigrants in the US use the largest share of remittances to defray health expenses (46.18%), followed by expenses for food and maintenance (29.79%), home construction and repair (7.47%), debt repayment (5.42%), and consumer purchases (4.46%). According to their survey, less than half a penny of every remittance dollar (0.46%) goes to starting or expanding a business.
Despite the prominence given to remittances from developed countries, so-called “South–South” financial remittances make up from 30% to 45% of total financial remittances received by developing countries in the mid-2000s. The growing importance of South–South remittances reflects the fact that over half of migrants from developing countries now migrate to other developing countries (World Bank, 2006: xiii).
World Bank data indicate a steady rise in recorded remittances worldwide, from approximately $25 billion in 1990 to nearly $100 billion in 2000. That figure approximately tripled to $300 billion by 2007. Recorded remittances flowing through standard commercial conduits capture from 50% to 60% of total (recorded and unrecorded) remittance estimates since the 2000s (Moneygram, 2010). For more on efforts to improve remittance accounting and compiling, see IMF (2009), Nyberg-Sørenson (2004), Reinke (2007) and World Bank (2006).
Aggarwal et al. (2010) have recorded that remittances promote similar trends in banking system depth and breadth for Mexico and 106 other developing countries observed from 1975 to 2007.
Fafchamps (2001) explains contracting patterns in sub-Saharan African countries without effective third-party (court) enforcement similarly. In these settings, informal relationships based on common clan or community membership can signal reliability as a trading partner. If the costs of cheating are high enough, then contracts are self-enforcing. Relationships serve as their own surety of contractual performance.
These 61 countries are Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam and Yemen.
See Docquier and Marfouk (2006) for details of their data collection and compilation methods. Six non-OECD countries included in their analyses of census and registration data are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Slovakia and South Korea. In my sample, developing countries more vulnerable to underestimation of immigrant skill level, given more pronounced South–South migration patterns, include Bangladesh, Botswana, Egypt, Jordan, Namibia, Pakistan and Yemen. Results including Immigrant Skill terms in Eq. (1) (Table 6) are robust to exclusion of these countries. Results excluding these countries are available from the author.
The 45 countries sampled and analyzed in columns 1–5 of Table 4 are Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine and Yemen.
A related slope test available in Zelner's (2009) intgph program confirms contrasts illustrated in Figure 3. Using his slope test, I confirm that the changes in new business counts one standard deviation below and above the sample mean for State Share of the Economy are significantly different at the 1% level. This result is available from the author.
The 59 countries sampled and analyzed in columns 1–4 (Economic Internationalization) of Table 5 are Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam and Yemen.
The 61 countries sampled and analyzed in columns 1 and 3 (General Capital Access and Economic Internationalization) of Table 5 are the same as previously analyzed in Tables 3 and 4. The 59 countries sampled and analyzed in column 2 (Venture Capital Access) of Table 5 are the same as previously analyzed in Table 3.
The 29 countries sampled and analyzed in columns 4 and 7 (General Capital Access and Economic Internationalization) of Table 5 are Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Moldova, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Ukraine and Yemen. The 24 countries sampled and analyzed in column 5 (Venture Capital Access) of Table 5 are Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Philippines, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda and Ukraine. The 15 countries sampled and analyzed in column 6 (New Business Creation) of Table 5 are Armenia, Bangladesh, Ghana, Haiti, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Moldova, Pakistan, Philippines, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine and Yemen.
Results from simulation of different two-way interactions based on Zelner's (2009) intgph program confirm trends implied by the insignificant coefficient sign for IS × Remittances presented in column 3 of Table 6: increasing immigrant skill does not significantly increase new business creation effect of remittances as Hypothesis 4 holds. These simulation results are available from the author.
Results from simulation of different two-way interactions based on Zelner's (2009) intgph program confirm trends implied by the significant (p<0.01) coefficient sign for IC × Remittances presented in column 7 of Table 6: increasing geographic concentration of immigrants abroad decreases (not increases as Hypothesis 5 holds) the new business creation impact of remittances. These simulation results are available from the author.
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Acknowledgements
This paper benefited from seminar presentations at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, Texas A&M's Mays Business School, Simon Fraser University's School of Management, Universidad Pablo Olavide's Departemento de Direccion Empresas, the University of Bath's School of Management, the European Business School, and the University of Warwick Business School. I received helpful comments, criticisms and suggestions from Daniel Ayala, Steven Block, Mark Casson, Lorraine Eden, Dan Forbes, Isaac Fox, Eric Gedajlovich, Steven Globerman, Aseem Kaul, Jongwook Kim, Robert Kudrle, Barbara Larraneta Gómez-Caminero, Marko Madunic, Alfie Marcus, Candace Martinez, Klaus Meyer, Steven Michael, Eric Nealy, Tom Roehl, Harry Sapienza, Myles Shaver, Mike Sher, Chirstian Stadler, Florian Taube, P. K. Toh, Joel Trachtman, Rosalie Tung, Andrew Van de Ven, Marc Ventresca, Richard Wang, Joel Waldfoegl, Isil Yavuz, Shaker Zahra and Bennet Zelner. I thank Chris Flegg, Joel Malen and Isil Yavuz for excellent research assistance. At the 2009 annual meetings of the Academy of Management, I presented an early version of this research with the same title, and co-authored with Isil Yavuz. The Carlson School Dean's Office provided valuable financial support. I am grateful to Mari Sako and staff at the Sainsbury Library of the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School for time and resources helpful in revising this paper during sabbatical leave in 2010–2011. All errors are mine.
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Accepted by Ishtiaq Mahmood, Area Editor, 18 July 2011. This paper has been with the author for two revisions.
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Vaaler, P. Immigrant remittances and the venture investment environment of developing countries. J Int Bus Stud 42, 1121–1149 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2011.36
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2011.36