Tourism and Growth in a Cross-Section of Countries

We provide an empirical assessment of the relationship between tourism specialisation and economic growth by updating the findings of previous papers written on this issue. We use data for more than 150 countries covering different time spans between 1980 and 2005. Contrary to previous findings (e.g., Brau et al., 2004 and 2007), tourism-based countries did not grow at a higher rate than non-tourism based countries, except for the 1980-1990 period for which, however, the data on international tourism are not fully reliable