Tourisme et croissance économique dans les petites économies insulaires : à l'épreuve des modèles à seuil (original) (raw)

2019, IATE conference paper

Since Balaguer and Cantavella-Jorda (2002), lots of studies have tried to support the hypothesis that tourism can promote economic growth. However, this hypothesis depends on the benefits of tourism development outweigh negative externalities. In other words, tourism development does not always bring about economic growth. These issues are at the heart of tourism strategies for islands, because most of them are dependent on tourism for their development. The aim of this paper is to analyze the empirical relation between tourism and economic growth for 46 small island economies using threshold modelisation. Contrary to the traditional studies which mobilize linear models, we apply the threshold test developed by Hansen (1999) to standard growth regressions in order to capture a non-linear effect of tourism on growth. Moreover in order to characterize the different thresholds, their numbers and the associated regimes, we use three variables: the number of tourists, the tourist receipts and the tourism penetration index (TPI). The TPI provides an overall measure of economic, social and environmental impact in small islands (McElroy & de Albuquerque, 1998). Our results confirm a non-linear effect of tourism on growth. The choice of TPI as tourism variable allows identifying two regimes. In the first one, tourism has a higher impact on economic growth when the TPI is lower. However, its impact decreases when TPI exceeds 0,30.