What Drives Remittances to Latin America? A Review of the Literature
Karla Borja

Abstract
Remittances are under the radar of the research community. Abundant empirical literature is available addressing different questions regarding these foreign inflows. Particularly, the work on the impact of remittances on economic growth and the factors driving them into developing nations has notoriously expanded for the region of Latin America. These two aspects of remittances, impact and sources, are actually related but the study and implication of such link has not been explicitly undertaken so far. To fill this gap, we review the most current literature on the forces driving remittances to Latin America in the search of evidence on the link between the causes and impact of these foreign transfers. Results from these studies indicate that the US economy is an important factor determining the level of remittances in the region.

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