Premised on the World Bank’s projection of a 20% fall in global remittances due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been concerns that remittance-dependent countries may be excessively affected. In this study, we explore the link between remittance, remittance volatility and macroeconomic performance to make a case for the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the study examined the impact of remittance volatility on some macroeconomic variables [real gross domestic product (RGDP), consumption, investment, export and exchange rate] in a panel of seven African countries with the highest remittance–GDP ratio. This was done within a fixed effects and random effects model, using annual secondary data from 2004 to 2018. Our results show that remittance volatility exerts a negative but insignificant impact on RGDP, consumption, investment, export and exchange rate; while remittances itself has positive significant impact on RGDP, consumption and investment. Based on these findings, while any COVID-19-induced volatility in remittances flow into Africa may yield negative macroeconomic consequences, it is not likely to significantly affect the macroeconomic fundamentals of the most remittance-dependent African countries due to strong kinsmanship and the altruistic nature of remitting African migrants.

The question of whether remittances and foreign aid at the macro level impact private consumption in SSA has been explored in this study. Twenty-nine (29) SSA countries were sampled for the study from 2002 to 2017. The System Generalized Method of Moment (SGMM) estimator was applied in the study to account for the dynamics in the model. Empirical evidence showed that foreign aid and remittances exerted positive but insignificant impact on private consumption.

This study explores the transmission of various policy uncertainty shocks—such as financial market uncertainty (using the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index), macroeconomic policy uncertainty (using the Global Economic Policy Uncertainty), and anthropogenic uncertainty (using geopolitical risks)—to Asia-Pacific country (APC) stock returns. We adapt a homogeneous panel vector autoregressive model for the distinct analysis of emerging and advanced APCs. Our major findings are that 1) APC stocks are vulnerable to financial and macroeconomic policy uncertainty shocks but less affected by geopolitical risks and 2) the negative impacts of policy uncertainty indicators are greater and longer lasting in advanced APCs than in emerging APCs. The more resilient emerging APC stocks have diversification benefits for investors. Our findings are robust to considerations of nominal and real stock returns.