Poema Isis Souza (p), Raul Silveira Neto, Joaquim Guilhoto

The tourism sector has emerged on the international scene due to the high growth of tourist activities in the world. In this context, the Northeast of Brazil has comparative advantages, because it has an extensive coastline with beautiful beaches. Therefore, in this study the participation of tourist activities in the Northeast economy and its relationships among sectors were analyzed from an inter-regional Input-Output Matrix, for the year 2009, in a pioneering way. In addition, information regarding the characteristics of the workforce employed in the tourism sector, with emphasis on the study of the observed level of informality in the sector were obtained. Finally, this study investigated the impacts of increased tourism demand in the Northeast on income inequality in that region and in the country. The results show a share of the tourism sector equivalent to 2.77% of GDP in the Northeast, while in Brazil this share was 2.27%. Thus, the tourism sector was more important for the Northeastern economy, compared to other regions of the country. It was found also that the Northeast has a higher weight in the tourism sector of the country, than your average share of the Brazilian economy in terms of employment and income. Indeed, there is evidence of the Northeastern economy specialization in the tourism sector in the country. Regarding the level of informality in tourism, the tourism sector was the participation of informal labor above the average observed for the sector in the Brazilian economy and, moreover, above average own informality observed in the Northeastern economy, which is characterized as the most informal of the country. In the last part of this study a positive effect of the tourism sector was observed on reducing income inequality in the Northeast and in Brazil.

Stella Kostopoulou, Stella Karoulia (p), Georgios Andreadis, Eleni Gaki

During those last years, countries and their regions are facing a number of unexpected phenomena such as terrorist attacks, climate change, corporate bankruptcies and economic crisis and so on, that undermine their structure and their development. Although the nature of these upheavals is common to all regions, the way they react, varies and is associated to the level of their resilience. Regional resilience is a relatively new term in the Regional Science and is defined as the ability of a region to prevent, prepare, respond and “recover” after a disturbance in way that this upheaval will not stand as an obstacle to its development. So, it, generally, refers to the ability of a system to maintain its identity and adapt its essential structure and function when dealing with shocks.

The main objective of this paper is to explore the various effects of the current economic crisis on specific Greek regions. More specifically, this paper deals with the effect of the economic crisis on tourism development.

Tourism is one of the biggest industries worldwide and a key driving force for socio-economic progress. Moreover, it is one of the main ‎sources of income for many countries, including Greece. Greece’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism as it reduces the deficit of the balance of payments, boosts employment, generates income, and contributes to regional development. More specifically, according to the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE), in 2015 tourism’s contribution to GDP was about 22% and to employment 19%.

Existing research on the resilience of tourism sector focuses mainly on the ecological aspect. Therefore, the effect of economic shocks on a tourist region is something worth investigation.

The methodological framework used in this analysis includes quantitative methods which are used to measure the degree of resilience regarding tourist sector for three Greek regions, i.e. Attica, Ipeirus and Crete for the period 2008-2015. These regions are selected because they have different patterns of tourism development. Finally, we introduce the use of a tourism development index with 3 subindices, namely the size of tourism development, the quality of tourism infrastructure and the economic impact of tourism. This Index will be measured for the above mentioned period in order to examine any signs of resilience.

Kaifan Chen (p) ,Tatsuaki Kuroda

This paper analyzes the situation in which the citizens of two countries have the opportunity to travel domestically and cross the border of the other country. The governments of both countries are assumed to be attempting to maximize the social welfare of their respective countries by choosing the appropriate domestic tax rates. The domestic tax serves as the source of funding for the improvements to the infrastructure of domestic tourism, including the areas of security, public facilities, natural areas, and artificial scenic construction. In the process, both governments compete for the attention of tourists. Each country in this game has a tourism industry in place. The two competing industries set the prices of their services, including entrance fees, to maximize their profits and overtake each other. We consider the factors that influence the tax rate and national income of both countries and identify a feasible strategy for their governments to maintain the attractiveness of their respective countries to tourists while remaining competitive. Although we derive the outcome of the sequential game, it is not easy to compare them in general cases. Hence, we assume several specific sets of parameters representing consumer preference, and then analyze the possible outcomes. According to the results of the simulation, it is found that there are several possible patterns.

Elvira Fetahu, Roberto Patuelli (p)

In recent decades, several waves of studies on tourism have considered its potential role in generating economic development. This objective is often operationalized by attempting to measure the effect of a number of tourism-related variables on GDP or other economic outcomes. In other words, a so-called “tourism-led growth hypothesis” (TLGH) is tested. Most studies in this line of research focus on single countries or even destinations, building on rather specific case studies or on a limited number of observations. On the other hand, other studies present evidence for groups of countries, aiming at generating generalizable findings. Several different methods are employed for this purpose, going from standard time series and Granger causality approaches to advanced dynamic panel data models. Only few papers have till now tried to reconcile the results from such different approaches and case studies, either qualitatively in the form of reviews, or quantitatively by means of meta-analysis (the only available contribution in this case being the one by Castro-Nuño et al., 2013, Journal of Travel Research). This paper aims to provide an overall assessment of a large sample of almost 100 studies on the TLGH published over the last thirty years and their respective findings. We do so by first providing a detailed literature review, and by subsequently carrying out a set of meta-analytical regressions. In particular, we focus on the different dimensions by which studies vary, such as the year of publication, the type of database used, country of application, period considered, econometric method employed and more. In addition, we control for the different possible variables used as indicators of economic outcome as well as to measure tourism demand (e.g., in this case, tourism receipts, tourism expenditure, tourist arrivals).