IV estimation of a panel threshold model of tourism specialization and economic development

The significant impact of international tourism in stimulating economic growth is especially important from a policy perspective. For this reason, the relationship between international tourism and economic growth would seem to be an interesting and topical empirical issue. The paper investigates wh...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chang C.-L., Khamkaew T., McAleer M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2014
Online Access:http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84863138807&partnerID=40&md5=b235a8f99726eb4759dab7a1a618f652
http://cmuir.cmu.ac.th/handle/6653943832/1221
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Institution: Chiang Mai University
Language: English
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Summary:The significant impact of international tourism in stimulating economic growth is especially important from a policy perspective. For this reason, the relationship between international tourism and economic growth would seem to be an interesting and topical empirical issue. The paper investigates whether tourism specialization was important for economic development in 159 countries over the period 1989-2008. The results from panel threshold regressions show a positive relationship between economic growth and tourism. Instrumental variable estimation of a threshold regression is used to quantify the contributions of tourism specialization to economic growth, while correcting for endogeneity between the regressors and error term. The significant impact of tourism specialization on economic growth in most regressions is robust to different specifications of tourism specialization, as well as to differences in real GDP measurement. However, the coefficients of the tourism specialization variables in the two regimes are significantly different, with a higher impact of tourism on economic growth found in the low regime. These findings do not alter with changes in the threshold variables. The empirical results suggest that tourism growth does not always lead to substantial economic growth.