Economic policy, tourism trade and productive diversification

Abstract

Over the past two decades, tourism exports have been a major driver of economic growth in many emerging and developing countries. Yet, increased tourism revenues do not automatically translate into structural transformation and broad-based economic development. Drawing on cross-sectional data, this paper gauges the extent to which tourism has contributed to economic diversification in a large sample of developing countries. An econometric model is used to assess the relative importance of a country's natural endowments, level of development, institutional maturity, business environment, and trade regulations in explaining crosscountry differences in linkages between tourism and the general economy. The central findings contain encouraging lessons for developing countries: domains that are more amenable to policy interventions in the short term, such as the business environment or trade regulations, matter most in fostering productive linkages between tourism and the general economy. In contrast, fixed factors, such as land availability, or longer-terms goals, such as advances in the level of development, have less influence.

Travel Channel Meets Discovery Channel or How Tourism Can Encourage Better Export Performance and Diversification in Nepal

“…The literature has been relatively silent on the injection that tourist spending can exert through promotional, network and learning effects on export performance and diversification, which is the contribution of our paper. To the best of our knowledge, the only exception is the work of Lejarraga and Walkenhorst (2013). In line with this paper, these authors argue that tourism-related activities help diversification by reducing self-discovery costs.…”

“…It also facilitates learning about production costs without having to incur expensive experimentation. As argued by Lejarraga and Walkenhorst (2013), new goods channeled through tourism are ones in which the minimum efficient scale is lower than in most other sectors; tourism-led entrepreneurs can test a 'foreign market' without incurring the transaction costs of exporting abroad (no border or administrative barriers, transport costs, etcetera) and the risks associated with the discovery are to some extent offset by the presence of a tourism market, as trial products can be sold to international tourists.…”

Travel Channel Meets Discovery Channel or How Tourism Can Encourage Better Export Performance and Diversification in Nepal

“…It also facilitates learning about production costs without having to incur expensive experimentation. As argued by Lejarraga and Walkenhorst (2013), new goods channelled through tourism are ones in which the minimum efficient scale is lower than in most other sectors; tourism-led entrepreneurs can test a 'foreign market' without incurring the transaction costs of exporting abroad (no border or administrative barriers, transport costs, etc. ), and the risks associated with the discovery are to some extent offset by the presence of a tourism market, as trial products can be sold to international tourists.…”

The Interdependence Between Tourism and Innovation Activity in the Western Borderlands of Russia

“…This cross-sectoral "fertilization" inevitably increases economic resilience. The inflow of tourists facilitates entrepreneurship and favors the diversity of economic activities (Lejárraga and Walkenhorst, 2013). While the correlation between tourism intensity and economic performance is extensively monitored and widely documented, the interdependence between the tourism and innovation activity is far less studied (according to Gomezelj (2016), these are only 12.4% of all published research on tourism).…”