“…A second fresh contribution of this paper is to investigate whether the financial development of the country hit by a natural disaster plays a role in affecting the response of remittances to such an adverse event. The relationship between remittances and financial development has been analyzed in the literature both indirectly, by looking at how they interact in promoting economic growth (Giuliano and Ruiz-Arranz, 2009;Mundaca, 2009;Ahamada and Coulibaly, 2011;, and directly, by analyzing to what extent remittances contribute to financial development (Gupta, Pattillo, and Wagh, 2009;Aggarwal, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Pería, 2011;Demirgüç-Kunt, Córdova, Pería, and Woodruff, 2011;Brown, Carmignani, and Fayad, 2013;Coulibaly, 2015) and to what extent the reverse holds true (Mookerjee and Roberts, 2011;Bettin, Lucchetti, and Zazzaro, 2012;Bang, Mitra, and Wunnava, 2013).…”