Essays on remittances, R&D and macroeconomy
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis is a collection of three self-contained empirical essays on remittances and R&D but unified by their importance to developing economies' economic growth, productivity, and the macroeconomy. The first essay revisits the debate on remittance and economic growth by examining whether there is a 'remittance trap' or threshold above which remittance starts to affect growth negatively. The study uses a relatively new econometric method known as Ordinary Least Squares regression with an identification strategy in the presence of heteroscedasticity to validate the results obtained from OLS and the system GMM. The usage of OLS-IH in the remittance and growth literature is a new contribution. Using a large panel dataset of 70 countries, the study finds that remittances appear to have a negative effect on growth between 1975-early 2000. This threshold appears to be 6.9% of the GDP. However, when a recent dataset up to 2018 was included, the threshold effect of remittances on growth started to disappear. Whether this vanishing effect in the post-2000 is due to the actual change in the relationship between remittances and growth or measurement errors associated with how remittances are compiled across countries remains a puzzle. Hence, this study reinforces that the remittances and growth debate remains inconclusive and needs to find better evidence and data. The second essay examines the short term macro-economic impact of remittances using a case study of Nepal. Despite the massive inflow of remittances during the turn of the century, the quantitative impact of remittances on the Nepali economy remains largely unexplored. Furthermore, macroeconomic modelling of the Nepali economy is at the infant stage primarily due to the unavailability of reliable data. Hence, using novel quarterly GDP data, this paper aims to fill both gaps by examining the effects of remittance and other macroeconomic variable shocks on the small open economy of Nepal between 2004 and 2019. Empl…
abstract: This thesis is a collection of three self-contained empirical essays on remittances and R&D but unified by their importance to developing economies' economic growth, productivity, and the macroeconomy. The first essay revisits the debate on remittance and economic growth by examining whether there is a 'remittance trap' or threshold above which remittance starts to affect growth negatively. The study uses a relatively new econometric method known as Ordinary Least Squares regression with an identification strategy in the presence of heteroscedasticity to validate the results obtained from OLS and the system GMM. The usage of OLS-IH in the remittance and growth literature is a new contribution. Using a large panel dataset of 70 countries, the study finds that remittances appear to have a negative effect on growth between 1975-early 2000. This threshold appears to be 6.9% of the GDP. However, when a recent dataset up to 2018 was included, the threshold effect of remittances on growth started to disappear. Whether this vanishing effect in the post-2000 is due to the actual change in the relationship between remittances and growth or measurement errors associated with how remittances are compiled across countries remains a puzzle. Hence, this study reinforces that the remittances and growth debate remains inconclusive and needs to find better evidence and data. The second essay examines the short term macro-economic impact of remittances using a case study of Nepal. Despite the massive inflow of remittances during the turn of the century, the quantitative impact of remittances on the Nepali economy remains largely unexplored. Furthermore, macroeconomic modelling of the Nepali economy is at the infant stage primarily due to the unavailability of reliable data. Hence, using novel quarterly GDP data, this paper aims to fill both gaps by examining the effects of remittance and other macroeconomic variable shocks on the small open economy of Nepal between 2004 and 2019. Empl…
author: Dahal, Sudyumna
language: en_AU
date published: 2023
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:07:14Z
provider: Australian Catholic University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian Catholic University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/299574