THE IMPACT OF TOURISM ON THE ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES: EVIDENCES FROM HIDDEN PANEL COINTEGRATION TEST

*Bolat, Süleyman ( Aksaray, Yazar )
Our main objective is to test for the potential asymmetric interaction between economic growth and tourism sector for a panel consisting of fourteen Mediterranean countries that covers the sample period 1995-2017 using hidden panel cointegration and asymmetric panel causality tests as developed by Hatemi-J (2020a; 2020b). The hidden panel cointegration test results show that there is a significant long-term relationship between the development of tourism sector and economic growth in terms of both negative and positive components. Elasticity findings indicate that economic growth is more sensitive to the increase in tourism revenues (positive shocks) than to the decrease in tourism revenues (negative shocks). In addition, the panel asymmetric causality test results show that there is no causal relationship between the negative components, and uni-directional causal relationship from the tourism sector to economic growth between the positive components. Causality test results support the tourism-led growth hypothesis. Tax advantages, subsidies and other advantageous policies contributing to the development of the tourism sector can increase the contribution of the tourism to economic growth. The findings emphasize that asymmetric effects should be taken into account in the relationship between the tourism sector and economic growth, and the tourism sector policies in these countries should be reconsidered in terms of regional disparity.