Papers
Tourism and economic growth in Latin American countries: a panel data approach
Eugenio-Martin, J.L., Martin-Morales, N. and R. Scarpa (2004)
FEEM Working Paper
We consider the relationship between tourism and economic growth for Latin American countries since 1985 until 1998. The analysis proposed is based on a panel data approach
and the Arellano-Bond estimator for dynamic panels. We obtain estimates of the relationship between economic growth and growth in tourists per capita conditional on main macroeconomic variables. We show that the tourism sector is adequate for the economic growth of medium or low-income countries, though not necessarily for developed countries.
We then invert the causality direction of the analysis. Rather than explaining economic
growth, we try to explain tourism arrivals conditional on GDP and other covariates such as
safety, prices and education level, and investment in infrastructures. We employ a generalised least squares AR(1) panel data model. The results provide evidence that low-
income countries seem to need adequate levels of infrastructures, education and development to attract tourists. Medium-income countries need high levels of social development like health services and high GDP per capita levels. Finally, the results disclose
that price of the destination, in terms of exchange rate and PPP is irrelevant for tourism growth.
Download (.pdf) Monitoring the congestion level of competitive destinations with mixed logit models
Eugenio-Martin, J.L. (2004)
TTRI Discussion Paper
Some local visitors or tourists avoid visiting resorts because they have experienced or anticipate overcrowding. Hence, policymakers are concerned to monitor congestion levels. The paper proposes the use of the elasticity of the probability of visiting a destination with respect to increases in congestion, from a mixed logit framework. The advantage of this approach is that it captures not only the current level of congestion but other aspects, such as the sensitivity of different destinations towards crowding and different visitors’ concern about congestion and their probabilities of visiting alternative destinations. It is shown that the rate of change of the elasticity increases with the number of visitors, capturing the expected underlying non-linear relationship such that, when the number of visitors is low, the index is also low but increases exponentially with the influx of new visitors.