Positive financial aspects of migrations and the diaspora for the people and economy of Serbia

Abstract

The subject of the paper is the analysis of economic and social advantages of remittance inflows from the Serbian diaspora. Remittances are important for domestic economy and people for several reasons. First and foremost, these remittances are at a high level because of a large number of Serbs that have emigrated in the decades behind us. Even though the exact amount of these remittances cannot be precisely calculated, due to the fact that a great portion of remittances comes to Serbia via informal channels, remittance inflows can have positive effects on many economic aspects of receiving countries, especially in the case of transitioning countries that have gone through difficult periods of economic and political crises, war crisis and devastations. Inflows from diaspora can affect the reduction of poverty, development of economic entities, and even the exchange rate of the country and economic development as a whole, and the diaspora can influence the improvement of political climate and economic relationships with foreign countries. In this paper, we wanted to examine the correlation and strength of the relationship (if any) between the trends of Serbia's GDP and remittances, as well as the relationship between GDP per capita in Serbia and remittances. The correlation procedure was performed in the IBM SPSS 21 program, and the World Bank data were used as a basis. It was concluded that the trend ratio of the GDP of Serbia and remittances is characterized by a positive correlation which was observed in the trend of the GDP of Serbia and remittances.