Can Agricultural Aid and Remittances Alleviate Macroeconomic Volatility in Response to Climate Change Shocks?

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of remittance and agricultural aid inflows on GDP growth rate volatility in response to climate change shocks in twenty-eight African countries by using system generalized method of moments from 1996 to 2013 with three years grouped data. The climate change shocks are indicated by four variables; natural disasters, rainfall variability, fluctuation in temperature and the weighted anomaly standardized precipitation (WASP) index. Consequently, natural disasters and temperature variability have a significant effect on GDP volatility, while rainfall variability and WASP index have no adverse consequence on stabilization of the economy. On the other hand, in general, remittances and agricultural aid are helpful to stabilize the economy and especially remittances inflows can play a crucial role as insurance when natural disasters occur.