Do Workers’ Remittances Promote Access to Finance? Evidence from Asia-Pacific Developing Countries

This study empirically analyzes the impact of remittance inflows on access to formal financial services using panel data on thirty-eight developing countries in Asia and Oceania between 2001 and 2012. Our results indicate that remittances help to enlarge the national branch network of commercial banks. These findings are robust to changes in the dependent variable, namely, the number of commercial bank branches per person or per area, as well as the estimation method. With regard to control variables, we find that income level and economic openness have positive impacts on the number of bank branches, whereas the inflation rate has a negative impact.