Tourism Development and Economic Growth in Seven Mediterranean Countries: A Panel Data Approach

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between economic growth and tourism development in seven Mediterranean countries. The purpose is to investigate empirically the long-run relationship between economic growth and tourism development in a multivariate model with tourism real receipts per capita, the number of international tourist arrivals per capita, real effective exchange rate, and real GDP per capita using the new heterogeneous panel cointegration technique. In pursuit of this objective, the tests of panel cointegration and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) are conducted, using panel data. The data used in this study are annual, covering the period 1980–2007.