Remittance Responses to Temporary Discounts: A Field Experiment among Central American Migrants

Serie

• NBER Working Papers

Resumen

• We study the impacts on remittances of offering migrants temporary discounts on remittance transaction fees. We randomly assigned migrants from El Salvador and Guatemala 10-week remittance transaction fee discounts, and assess impacts using administrative transaction data and a post-experiment survey. Temporary discounts lead to substantial increases in the number of transactions and total amount remitted during the discount period. Surprisingly, these increases persist up to 20 weeks after expiration of the discount. We find no evidence that the discounts cause migrants to shift remittances from other remittance channels, or to send remittances on behalf of other migrants. These findings are consistent with naïveté on the part of migrants regarding remittance recipients' reference-dependent preferences.

autores

• Ambler, Kate
• Aycinena, Diego
• Yang, Dean

fecha de publicación

• 2014-09

Área temática

• F24 - Remesas
• J61 - Movilidad geográfica de la mano de obra; Trabajadores inmigrantes
• O15 - Recursos humanos; Desarrollo humano; Distribución de la renta; Migraciones

Enfoque geográfico

• El Salvador  Country
• Guatemala  Country
• central America 

Issue

• 20522