Remittances and the Problem of Control: A Field Experiment Among Migrants from El Salvador

本项目旨在检验将更多的汇款控制权交给在美国的萨尔瓦多移民是否能改善萨尔瓦多接受汇款家庭的福祉。作者着重于提高移民的能力，以确保将汇款存入母国的储蓄账户并积累起来。该项目开发并提供了新的储蓄工具，使萨尔瓦多移民能够将其汇款的一部分直接转入萨尔瓦多的储蓄账户。为了测试控制储蓄的重要性，PI采用了随机现场实验方法：移民被随机分配到不同的待遇条件下，这些条件取决于他们对账户的控制程度。该项目将通过对美国移民及其在萨尔瓦多相应的汇款接收家庭的小组调查来衡量影响。本项目考察了让移民直接控制储蓄的创新金融产品是否会鼓励移民提高汇款金额和储蓄水平，并最终改善其家乡家人的福祉。本研究的第一个关键贡献是使用随机现场实验方法提出这些新问题，以便明确影响的因果渠道。PI比较了提供给移民的控制程度不同的治疗条件的影响，因此能够确定控制对移民财务决策和萨尔瓦多家庭结果的因果影响。移民造成了家庭结构的变化，加剧了家庭内部的信息不对称。该项目将通过调查冲突和信息不对称在储蓄和汇款决策中的作用，为家庭内部决策文献做出贡献。研究国际移徙和家庭经济学的学者以及经济理论家也应该对这些结果感兴趣，因为它们有助于确定控制问题和信息不对称是否确实是家庭成员之间资源转移的重要决定因素。该项目的另一个贡献是广泛的调查工作，这将包括在美国的移民和他们在萨尔瓦多的相应家庭成员。这种匹配的移民/来源家庭调查很少尝试，因此所得数据集对于经济学以及其他有兴趣获得移民家庭社会经济状况全貌的学科的研究人员来说将是有价值的。更广泛的影响这项工作揭示了一种新方法的潜力，可以最大限度地发挥汇款对移民原籍国经济发展的影响。PI记录了移民对收款人如何使用汇款有更多控制权所带来的好处。鉴于全世界的汇款数额巨大，加强汇款发展效益的行之有效的办法可以对国际发展领域的政策和做法产生重大影响。虽然这项研究的重点是加强对储蓄的移民控制，但这项研究的见解将表明，在住房、教育和小企业融资等其他领域，设施有可能加强对移民的控制。这项工作可以帮助制定亚洲开发银行和世界银行等发展机构的政策，例如，这些机构可以向寻求开发金融产品的政府所有和私营金融机构提供技术援助，使移民能够更好地控制汇款的使用。作者还希望该项目能够鼓励发展政策领域的创新者考虑针对发达国家移民的广泛干预措施，而不仅仅是针对移民国的汇款接受者。国家的起源。如果我们的干预导致萨尔瓦多家庭福祉的巨大收益，我们希望这将促进针对发达国家移民的其他创新干预，以期改善国内家庭的生活

This project tests whether putting more control over remittances into the hands of U.S.-based Salvadoran migrants leads to improved well-being for remittance-recipient households in El Salvador. The authors focus on improving the ability of migrants to ensure that remittances are deposited and accumulated in savings accounts in the home country. This project has developed and offered new savings facilities that allow Salvadoran migrants to directly channel some fraction of their remittances into savings accounts in El Salvador. To test the importance of control over savings, the PI uses randomized field experimental methods: migrants are randomly allocated to treatment conditions that vary in the amount of control they have over the accounts. The project will measure impacts via a panel survey of migrants in the U.S. and their corresponding remittance-recipient households in El Salvador.Intellectual MeritThis project examines whether innovative financial products, that give migrants direct control over savings, encourage migrants to raise their remittance amounts, savings levels, and ultimately improve the well-being of their families back home. The first key contribution of this research is to ask these new questions using randomized field experimental methods, so that causal channels of influence are clear. The PI compares impacts across treatment conditions that vary in the amount of control offered to the migrant, and so are able to determine the causal impact of control on the migrant's financial decision-making and on the outcomes of households in El Salvador.Migration creates changes in household structure that exacerbate intra-household information asymmetries. This project will contribute to the intra-household decision making literature by investigating the role of conflict and information asymmetries in saving and remittance sending decisions. The results should also be of interest to scholars of international migration and the economics of the family, as well as for economic theorists, in helping determine whether control issues and asymmetric information are indeed important determinants of resource transfers among family members. An additional contribution of the project is the extensive survey work, which will encompass both migrants in the U.S. and their corresponding family members in El Salvador. Such matched migrant/source household surveys are rarely attempted, and so the resulting dataset will be valuable for researchers in economics as well as other disciplines interested in obtaining a complete picture of the socio-economic situation of migrant families.Broader ImpactsThis work reveals the potential of a new approach to maximizing the impact of remittances on economic development in migrants' origin countries. The PI documents the benefits that result when migrants are given more control over how remittances are used by remittance recipients. Given the large magnitude of remittance flows worldwide, a proven approach to enhancing their development benefits can have substantial impact on policy and practice in the international development arena. While the study focuses on enhancing migrant control over savings, the insights from this study will suggest the potential of facilities enhancing migrant control in other areas, such as housing, education, and small enterprise funding. The work can help shape the policies of development institutions such as the IADB and the World Bank, which (for example) could provide technical assistance to government-owned and private financial institutions that are seeking to develop financial products that give migrants more control over remittance uses.The authors also aspire for this project to encourage innovators in the development policy arena to consider a broad set of interventions that target migrants in developed countries, rather than just remittance recipients in the migrants? origin countries. If our intervention leads to large gains in the well-being of families in El Salvador, we hope this will facilitate other innovative interventions targeting migrants in developed countries with an eye towards improving the lives of families back home