Kiyoshi Matsubara (p)

Taiyo Yoshimi

See extended abstract.

Hiroshi Mukunoki (p), Hirofumi Okoshi

Kiyoshi Matsubara

See the attached extended abstract.

Elvira Fetahu , Roberto Patuelli (p), Laura Vici

Hiroshi Mukunoki

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).

Kazunobu Hayakawa, Naoto Jinji, Toshiyuki Matsuura, Taiyo Yoshimi (p)

Roberto Patuelli

This paper proposes methods to quantify fixed costs associated with utilizing preferential tariff schemes in regional trade agreements (RTAs) based on a model of international trade where heterogeneous exporters decide which tariff scheme to use. Specifically, our methods allow us to compute the ratio of additional fixed costs of utilizing RTA schemes to general fixed costs of exporting, which we call the “fixed cost ratio (FCR).” Our (median) estimates of the FCR from Japan’s import data show that RTA utilization in exports incurs 8–10% of additional fixed costs. We also show empirically that the FCR is higher for products made using more inputs. Furthermore, by using these estimates of the FCR, we show that a decrease of the FCR by 1% raises the share of imports in total imports under RTAs by 1.73 percentage points, on average.