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Serbia has become one of the largest remittance-recipient countries in the world. It is estimated that in 2004 Serbia received US2.4 billion dollars in remittances from Serbian workers in Germany, the United States, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and other countries. This amount represented 12 percent of Serbia’s GDP. This report provides an overview of remittance flows from Germany to Serbia and analyzes why a large part of remittance transfers take place outside financial institutions. The study presents a series of recommendations on needed policy changes to facilitate the transfer of remittance flows from the informal channels to licensed or registered financial institutions, thereby maximizing the developmental impact of remittances, reducing remittances fees, improving data collection practices, and strengthening the regulation and supervision of themoney transfer industry.

The UK-Nigeria remittance corridor has an equal dominance of formal and informal remittance intermediaries. Although several formal financial institutions for transferring money exist in the UK, many people choose to send money informally. More collaboration between the UK and Nigeria is necessary to develop the remittance market, to encourage the use of formal channels, and to enhance the development potential. Among its benefits, the remittance country partnership (RCP) between UK and Nigeria aims to reduce the cost of remittance transfers. The Nigerian government is engaging its diaspora to help spur economic growth. This report recommends that each government focus on improving data collection at its end of the corridor and do more research to provide its policymakers and its private sector with accurate information.

This study reports on recent development and future potential for U.S.-based Guatemalan workers cross-border retail transfers to be more formal, cheaper, and disposed to the cross-sale of financial products and services. It also presents the key features of remittances senders, recipients, instruments, and intermediaries involved. The paper focuses on three areas: (a) the main characteristics of the Guatemalan migrants in the United States and the key drivers behind their decision to remit money and to choose an intermediary; (b) financial infrastructure supporting U.S.-Guatemala remittances processing, especially the role of technology, payment systems and innovations going forward, as avenues to help lower transaction costs, among others; and (c) the landscape of workers remittances distribution in Guatemala, examines the characteristics of recipients and the evidence of remittances impact, and analyzes the indications of potential for cross-sale of financial services to recipients.

Financial integration creates complexities in risk transmission across commodities, currencies and equities, fuelled by non-immediate information systems, with implications for commodity-dependent nations during crises. Accordingly, this study analyses the time- and frequency-based connectedness between commodities, pressure currencies and equities in commodity-dependent sub-Saharan African states, including Botswana, Ghana, Kenya and Namibia. The study emphasised commodities that contribute immensely to the export revenues of the sample countries, including agricultural (cocoa, coffee, corn and cotton) and IDMs (aluminium, copper, nickel and zinc), spanning from January 2012 to December 2022. Through the Barunik and Křehlík index (BK-18), we revealed varying risk transmissions among the sample markets, with the long-term branded as the period of contagion given the multitude of bidirectional transmissions of shocks among these markets. The time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) approach further complemented these results with contagion observed during the pandemic, nickel crash, pressure-currency era, as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The results highlight commodities and currencies as net transmitters of shocks, while the sampled equity market served as shock receivers, with few exceptions and these were further substantiated by the TVP-VAR and the nonlinear causality test. The study has uncovered significant implications for policy-making, portfolio diversification strategies and risk management approaches. It is recommended that the central banks of the sample economies implement robust risk management policies that consider these interlinkages and diversify the economy with innovative sectors to reduce the region’s susceptibility to commodity and currency shocks and enhance equity market development.

Now-a-days fire disasters are very common it will occur at any time and it may lead to loss of money and human lives. This paper proposes the use of robot to extinguish the fire in its beginning stage of a small flame itself by continuously monitoring the area therefore the fire accidents will be reduced. It is also used to help fire fighters in extinguishing fire in narrow areas and also in hazardous situation so it would reduce the risk of fire fighters in the process of saving victims life. This robot is developed to extinguish the fire in its beginning stage itself.

This study employs the TVP-VAR approach to capture the degree of interdependencies and contagion among sixteen implied volatilities. The 16 daily implied volatility indices comprise the implied volatility from various financial assets, such as conventional equities, commodities, and currencies, in national, regional, or worldwide indexes. After missing data were expunged, the daily data span between 5 August 2016 and 18 August 2021 inclusive, yielding 1758 observations. We reveal strong evidence to support that the network of implied volatilities is highly connected. Nonetheless, dynamic connectedness varies across time demonstrating that the markets are heterogenous and adaptive. The rise in connectedness during crisis and non-crisis periods indicates that both contagion and interdependencies are germane to implied volatilities. The outcome from the net directional connectedness underscores that the CBOE Euro Currency Volatility, CBOE Crude Oil Volatility, CBOE Gold Volatility, Hang Seng Index (HSI) and CAC 40 VIX are net persistent receivers whereas CBOE Russell 2000 Volatility, CBOE NASDAQ 100 Volatility, DJIA Volatility, CBOE VIX and CBOE OEX Implied Volatility are persistent net transmitters. The size and direction of net connectedness enlighten investors to pair persistent net receivers and transmitters. Practical, policy and theoretical implications are provided.

The influence of recent global shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war on the variability of major macroeconomic trends not only shows synchronized behavior across economies but also induces similar policy responses to counter these shocks. The purpose of this article is to explore the transmission of inflation among the G20 economies and evaluate its contribution to domestic inflation. To this end, we use the Diebold and Yilmaz spillover approach. The results that emerge from unconditional analysis reveal stark dissimilarities in inflation spillover patterns between advanced and emerging economies. Advanced economies are subject to higher spillover rates and thereby more exposed to global shocks compared to their emerging counterparts. Inflation in emerging countries is mainly derived from idiosyncratic shocks, while global shocks have only a modest influence on domestic inflation. In addition, bilateral spillovers among the G20 members show that the average pairwise directional spillovers between emerging economies are lower compared to advanced economies. The results pertaining to the spillover dynamics, on the other hand, show that total inflation spillover has a clear upward trend, indicating that the overall interconnectedness between G20 countries is increasing over time. Moreover, the estimates of spillover dynamics show a growing influence of received inflation spillovers from external shocks in both advanced and emerging economies. Policymakers in advanced economies are expected to respond to global shocks to mitigate the influence of spillovers, which is essential for economies that display high spillovers and turn out to be net receivers of shocks. However, public agencies in emerging economies should concentrate more on internal shocks to control inflation while not ignoring global shocks.

What happens to remittances, an important feature of the global financial system, when a pandemic strikes? Despite early predictions of significant drops in volumes, flows have been affected less than expected. This commentary explains that this outcome is attributable in part to a renewed focus on the infrastructure of global finance and an accelerated development and use of digital solutions, but that it is mostly a result of the individual efforts and resilience of migrants.