IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zeiwps/b082005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Remittances as investment in the absence of altruism

Author

Listed:
  • González-König, Gabriel

Abstract

In the absence of altruism, there is no obvious reason why a migrant should remit part of his income to his family for investment at the home location. If the family invests such income (in housing for example), why would they give it back to the migrant when he returns? This paper is based on the idea that certain people at a migrant's home location may punish those families who do not return those investments in order to prevent their own possibilities of receiving future remittances and investments from being adversely affected. We find that in equilibrium we can have remittances to be invested and given back to the migrant and remittances for private consumption by the migrant's family even in the complete absence of altruism on either the part of the migrant or his family.

Suggested Citation

  • González-König, Gabriel, 2005. "Remittances as investment in the absence of altruism," ZEI Working Papers B 08-2005, University of Bonn, ZEI - Center for European Integration Studies.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zeiwps:b082005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/39480/1/512933901.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    2. Andreoni, James, 1989. "Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1447-1458, December.
    3. Stark, Oded, 1989. "Altruism and the Quality of Life," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 86-90, May.
    4. Kandel, Eugene & Lazear, Edward P, 1992. "Peer Pressure and Partnerships," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(4), pages 801-817, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Oded Stark, 2009. "Reasons for Remitting," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 10(3), pages 147-158, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dimant, Eugen, 2015. "On Peer Effects: Behavioral Contagion of (Un)Ethical Behavior and the Role of Social Identity," MPRA Paper 68732, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Gary-Bobo, Robert J. & Nur, Jamil, 2015. "Housing, Capital Taxation and Bequests in a Simple OLG Model," CEPR Discussion Papers 10774, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Hongbin Li & Mark Rosenzweig & Junsen Zhang, 2010. "Altruism, Favoritism, and Guilt in the Allocation of Family Resources: Sophie's Choice in Mao's Mass Send-Down Movement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(1), pages 1-38, February.
    4. Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, "undated". "Pro-Social Behavior, Reciprocity or Both?," IEW - Working Papers 107, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    5. Brunner, Eric & Sonstelie, Jon, 2003. "School finance reform and voluntary fiscal federalism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2157-2185, September.
    6. Dean Karlan & John A. List, 2007. "Does Price Matter in Charitable Giving? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1774-1793, December.
    7. Arbel, Yuval & Bar-El, Ronen & Schwarz, Mordechai E. & Tobol, Yossef, 2019. "To What Do People Contribute? Ongoing Operations vs. Sustainable Supplies," IZA Discussion Papers 12180, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Carvajal, Andrés & Song, Xinxi, 2022. "A simple(r) Lindahl solution to the provision of public goods with warm-glow: Efficiency and implementation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    9. Cecere, Grazia & Mancinelli, Susanna & Mazzanti, Massimiliano, 2014. "Waste prevention and social preferences: the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 163-176.
    10. Gauriot, Romain & Heger, Stephanie A. & Slonim, Robert, 2020. "Altruism or diminishing marginal utility?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 24-48.
    11. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, "undated". "Why Social Preferences Matter - The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition," IEW - Working Papers 084, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    12. Jen Shang & Rachel Croson, 2009. "A Field Experiment in Charitable Contribution: The Impact of Social Information on the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(540), pages 1422-1439, October.
    13. Lai, Mun Sim & Orsuwan, Meechai, 2009. "Examining the Impact of Taiwan's Cash Allowance Program on Private Households," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 1250-1260, July.
    14. Gary E. Bolton & Jordi Brandts & Elena Katok & Axel Ockenfels & Rami Zwick, "undated". "Testing Theories of Other-regarding Behavior," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2002-43, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    15. Enrico Colombatto & Valerio Tavormina, 2015. "Does altruism justify privileges?," ICER Working Papers 01-2015, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    16. Ester Manna, 2017. "Customer‐oriented employees: Blessing or curse for firms?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 842-875, December.
    17. Audrey Light & Kathleen McGarry, 2004. "Why Parents Play Favorites: Explanations for Unequal Bequests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1669-1681, December.
    18. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, "undated". "Theories of Fairness and Reciprocity - Evidence and Economic Applications," IEW - Working Papers 075, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    19. Kanagaretnam, Kiridaran & Mestelman, Stuart & Nainar, Khalid & Shehata, Mohamed, 2009. "The impact of social value orientation and risk attitudes on trust and reciprocity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 368-380, June.
    20. van der Pol, Thomas & Weikard, Hans-Peter & van Ierland, Ekko, 2012. "Can altruism stabilise international climate agreements?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 112-120.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Remittances; Altruism; Migration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:zeiwps:b082005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zeibnde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.