Determining the influence of natural disasters and public holidays on airtime top-up transfers

Abstract

Remittance flows have a vast influence on the economies of many countries, primarily the developing ones. In this thesis, we utilize airtime top-up credits for 2020 received by fifteen countries. The data was obtained after collaborating with DTOne company. The aim is to determine the influence of natural disasters and public holidays on these top-up transfers. We developed a regression model to investigate the correlation among these factors. Our findings suggest that the most influenced natural hazards on the airtime top-ups are droughts, storms, floods, and epidemics. Among the results, we revealed that international migrants support their families back to their origin countries on important national or religious holidays. Moreover, ARIMAX and SARIMAX models were developed for Indonesia, Ethiopia, and the Philippines that forecast the next day's top-up credits. We observed that some models predict the peaks occurring due to holidays or natural hazards. However, there were some constraints when developing these models.