Fluctuations in Migrant Workers’ Remittances over Home and Host Country Business Cycles

The Department of Economics and the School of Business and Management to invite you to a lecture by Professor Serdar Sayan as part of the Economics Distinguished Lecture Series.

Dr. Sayan is Professor of Economics, Director of the Center for Social Policy Research, and Dean of the Graduate School of Social Sciences at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, Turkey.

Abstract

Workers' remittances are often argued to have a tendency to move counter to the output movements over business cycles in recipient countries since migrant workers are expected to remit more during contraction of economic activity back home. Yet, how much to remit is a complex decision involving other factors, including the state of economic activity over the business cycles in the countries of destination. Further, there may be systematic co-movements between home and host country business cycles, particularly when there are strong bilateral links (such as trade and investment flows) between the two economies. The existing literature on cyclical characteristics of remittances began to grow following the publication of two papers by Sayan (2004 and 2006), focusing on the linkages between cyclical fluctuations in remittances and output (or business) cycles in the home (migrant-sending) countries. The literature then extended to cover the effects of host (migrant-receiving) country business cycles on cyclical fluctuations in remittances sent home by migrant workers, but still lacks analyses of the possible impact of any interactions and systematic co-movements likely to be observed between the home and host country business cycles. To contribute to the filling of this gap, the paper develops a framework to investigate the business cycle dynamics behind the remittance decisions of migrant workers by recognizing the potential of cyclical fluctuations in the host country's output to affect output movements over home country business cycles. It then discusses the relevance of this problem to Germany-Turkey and USA-Mexico migration corridors in light of empirical results and draw lessons.

About the Presenter

At TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, Dr. Serdar Sayan teaches and serves as the Director of the Graduate School for Social Sciences and as the Vice Dean of the College of Economics and Administrative Sciences. He concurrently directs the Entrepreneurship Institute at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey.

Dr. Sayan has taught at Bilkent University in Ankara and Ohio State University in the US. He was a GDN Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund and advisor to the Research Department of the Turkish Undersecretariat for Foreign Trade. Among his various honors are the Young Scientist of the Year Award of the Parlar Foundation and being selected as a Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum.

His main areas of research are international economics, computational economics and demography. He is widely published in academia and contributes to newspapers and broadcast media in Turkey and abroad.  He is an Associate Editor of Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, and was the editor-in-chief of International Economics and Foreign Trade Policies.

He has served as president, executive secretary and a board member of the Middle East Economic Association. He also served on the board of directors of the Turkish Economic Association and is currently an active member of the Society for Computational Economics.

Dr. Sayan received his undergraduate degree from the Department of Economics at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and his PhD in Economics at the Ohio State University in Columbus, USA.

Dr. Sayan will be available for appointments on March 17 in SBM 2069 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. To book an appointment, please send an email to [email protected].

For more information on the Economics Distinguished Lecture Series, please visit www.aus.edu/sbm/ess.