“…The theoretical framework for persistence in tourism builds on recent empirical literature on persistence in inclusive development (Asongu & Nwachukwu, 2017a) and banking sector (Stephan & Tsapin, 2008;Goddard et al, 2011) developments. This theoretical underpinning is consistent with the literature on income convergence which has been substantially documented within the framework of neoclassical growth estimations (Barro, 1991;Barro & Sala-i-Martin, 1992, 1995Mankiw et al, 1992;Baumol, 1986), and recently extended to other domains of economic development, inter alia: financial market performance (Narayan et al, 2011;Bruno et al, 2012;Asongu, 2013) and inclusive human development (Mayer-Foulkes, 2010;Asongu, 2014).…”