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The paper focuses on the identification of the relationship between tourism and economic growth of the Carpathian Euroregion located across seven borders of Central and Eastern European countries (Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and Romania). By analysing the relationship between tourism and economic growth within the region, the paper quantifies the positive impact of tourism on GDP growth per capita. To test for the existence and strength of such a relationship, we use a panel econometric model based on conditional β-convergence. The results confirm the tourism-led growth hypothesis, and determine the extent of regional disparities in tourism activities between different parts of the Carpathian Euroregion, observed during the increase in tourist attractiveness between 2005 and 2015. For Ukraine, where political instability has led to a decrease in the total number of visiting tourists, we show that the dynamics for its part of the Carpathian Euroregion are markedly different, as it has benefited from the changing structure of tourist flows.

We provide evidence of a positive relationship between the intensity of gambling and economic growth in 27 European countries for 2005-2013. Our proxy for gambling is represented by government revenues from taxes on lotteries, betting and gambling. This variable is linked to GDP growth in a panel regression framework and pooled OLS. However, when we split our sample to account for the heterogeneity among European countries, we found that the positive "gambling -GDP growth" relationship is driven extensively by the Central and Eastern European countries. It appears that people in these countries tend to gamble more when the economy is expanding.JEL classification: L83, O1, O4

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