The Forgotten Transfer - A Microeconomic Perspective on the Relevance of Educational Level for Selection of Transaction Channel for Domestic EU Remittances

摘要

Up until today, academic research in the area of domestic remittances has been overshadowedby research on the globally far more recognized concept of international remittances. Theabundance of research has furthermore focused on elucidating potential net benefits anddrawbacks’ stemming from these financial flows, without much emphasis on selection oftransaction channels. There are, however, several reasons as to why this area should not beneglected given its interconnectedness with harvesting benefits and the general governmentalinterest to promote the usage of formal channels which are more easily monitored and can beregulated to prevent remittances being used for illegal purposes. European research onremittances has furthermore often been linked to migration and outflows to developingcountries and analysis on domestic transfers on individual level is scarce. This thesis thereforeaims to give new insight, from a EU perspective, in the sector of domestic remittances andindividual-level motivators behind preference of a certain method for the transaction. Givenidentified linkages between educational level and selection of channel in the few existingprevious studies, the thesis examines if the identified correlation holds also for domesticremittances while controlling for other potentially influential variables. Based on the resultsfrom a multinomial logistic regression on aggregated micro level data from 11 EU memberstates, the approximated relationship where a higher level of education increases thelikelihood of a remitter selecting a formal transaction channel over an informal holds up fordomestic remittance flows. The results further approximate significant predictions for thetransaction channel selection from other variables such as age of the remitter.