The remittance inflows in Visegrad countries: a source of economic growth, or migration policy misting?

Abstract

The global economy and worldwide open market of goods and services creates a favorable environment for expanding technological cooperation among countries. However, such development is also accompanied by an intense movement of the labor force. After opening the EU single market, a large number of foreign workers from the new member countries found the better paying jobs in the highly developed EU countries. The total volume of this financial compensation that was transferred into mother countries was more than USD 70 billion in 2017. A primary question for this situation is the role that these financial sources play in the economies of the mother countries. Have the transferred money contributed to economic growth or have they been materialized in the sphere of private household consumption? Our paper answers these questions in the case of the Visegrad (V4) countries. The scientific literature does not offer a unified position in this respect. The positive, neutral, and negative impacts on concerned economies are presented. In our view, the answers should be verified in the specific conditions of the beneficiary countries, taking into account all the statistically relevant factors. The primary source of our information is statistical data of international organizations, particularly of the United Nations (UN), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union, and the International Organization for Migration. As a tool for solution was applied the analysis of panel data.