Lecture on “Seasonal Poverty, Seasonal Migration, and Remittances”

The first lecture of the series will be given by Mushfiq Mobarak from Yale School of Management. It will take place on Thursday 19 September from 13.00 to 17.00 in Luxembourg and online via Webex.

Practical information:

• Registration: free but mandatory here
• Date: Thursday 19 September; 13:00 – 17:00
• Venue: room D17, University of Luxembourg, 6, rue Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, L-1359 Luxembourg 
• Online access: a Webex link will be shared with registered participants before the event
• Contact: across@uni.lu

Seasonal Poverty, Seasonal Migration, and Remittances

A large literature, including the World Bank’s 2023 World Development Report, explores the interlinkages between international migration and economic development. But most human mobility in the world is within-country, not across international borders. The talk will outline a research agenda and open questions around the causes and consequences of internal, within-country migration, as well as the opportunities and impediments associated with such movements. Much of that movement in seasonal and circular, in response to seasonal deprivation during pre-harvest lean periods.

We will then pivot to discussing the details of a research paper titled “Remittance Constraints and Seasonal Poverty.” Rural households send migrants to mitigate seasonal deprivation, but remittances don't always arrive in time. We observe a counter-intuitive pattern in Nepal where remittances are low when rural residents are food insecure, and migrants return with remittances later during harvest. To overcome this apparent remittance constraint indirectly, we provide a $90 loan to randomly-selected rural households during the pre-harvest lean season. Harvest period remittances increase in loan-recipient households, and 89% of the loan principal is repaid. Food security improves, and those households increase fertilizer use and own-farm labor. That increases their rice harvest, revenues, and subjective well-being. In a two-period model of household decision-making, we show that remittance frictions are necessary to qualitatively match our experimental results.

More information about Mushfiq Mobarak

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak is the Jerome Kasoff ’54 Professor of Management and Economics at Yale University with concurrent appointments in the School of Management and in the Department of Economics (Faculty of Arts and Sciences).

An Event supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) (PRIDE19/14302992) and (RESCOM/2024/LE/18786706)