Exploring the tourism markets’ convergence hypothesis in South Korea

Abstract

This paper examines the tourism markets’ convergence hypothesis across South Korea’s major source markets. In doing so, we use monthly data of visitor arrivals over the period July 1995 to June 2019 and adopt a novel quantile unit root tests that allows for multiple structural breaks via a Fourier expansion series. Our results indicate that seven countries out of 10 show firm convergence tendencies at most of the quantiles, and two countries have weak but significant converging trends at some quantiles.