Tourism Specialization and Economic Development: Evidence from the UNESCO World Heritage List

By John M. Piotrowski, Rabah Arezki, Reda Cherif

August 1, 2009

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John M. Piotrowski, Rabah Arezki, and Reda Cherif. Tourism Specialization and Economic Development: Evidence from the UNESCO World Heritage List, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2009) accessed December 4, 2024

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

The present paper investigates whether tourism specialization is a viable strategy for development. We estimate standard growth equations augmented with a variable measuring tourism specialization using instrumental variables techniques for a large cross-section of countries for the period 1980-2002. We introduce an instrument for tourism based on the UNESCO World Heritage List. We find that there is a positive relationship between the extent of tourism specialization and economic growth. An increase of one standard deviation in the share of tourism in exports leads to about 0.5 percentage point in additional annual growth, everything else being constant. Our result holds against a large array of robustness checks.

Subject: Education, Personal income, Public expenditure review, Purchasing power parity, Tourism

Keywords: Coefficient, Economic growth, Growth, Growth equation, Number, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

24
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2009/176
Stock No:

WPIEA2009176
ISBN:

9781451873238
ISSN:

1018-5941

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