The Impact of Tourism Development on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Nyasha, Sheilla and Odhiambo, Nicholas and Asongu, Simplice (2020): The Impact of Tourism Development on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. Forthcoming in: European Journal of Development Research

Abstract

This study examines the dynamic impact of tourism development on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using the Generalised Method of Moments and data covering the period from 2002 to 2018. The increasingly important role of tourism and the limelight the tourism sector has been enjoying of late, on the one hand, and the lack of sufficient coverage of tourism-growth nexus studies in Africa in general and in SSA in particular, motivated this study. Unlike most of the known panel data-based studies on tourism development and economic growth, this study has split the sub-Saharan African countries into low-income and middle-income sub-Saharan African countries. The results of the study show that tourism expenditure negatively affects economic growth while tourism receipts have the opposite effect in SSA. The findings are robust to the low-income sub-sample while only the effect of tourism expenditure is robust in the middle-income sub-sample.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Tourism Development; Economic Growth; Sub-Saharan Africa, SSA, Middle Income Countries, Low Income Countries, Generalised Method of Moments, GMM
• Subjects: O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O10 - General; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity > O40 - General; Z - Other Special Topics > Z0 - General

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