Dynamics of global remittances: A graph-based analysis

Human migration is an increasing world-wide phenomenon by which people leave their homeland to find better living conditions. This phenomenon entails financial issues for host countries. One of these issues are remittances. Remittances produce money flows that can considerably interfere with country micro and macroeconomics. Therefore, the understanding of remittance functioning at global scale is crucial for adopting adequate control policies in areas such as tax evasion, capital flow and money laundering. This work contributes to such understanding by both developing and analyzing a graph modeling approach that describes the interaction, concentration and circular patterns of world-wide remittances. The graph model analyzes degree distribution, vertex degrees and two-vertex cycles and it is constructed from World Bank data. As a result, the remittance graph evidences a power law in the degree distribution, very concentrated producer and receiver remittance communities and large circular flows of remittances.