Tourism, capital good imports and long-run growth

Abstract EN

This paper presents a theoretical growth model that attempts to identify one of the mechanisms linking tourism and economic growth in the MENA region.

In particular, it establishes the link between tourism exports, imports of capital goods and economic growth.

This new channel of economic growth is inspired by tourist destination economies, such as Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey and Egypt, in which long-run economic growths were achieved by imports of foreign capital financed through tourism exports.

This model also highlights a mechanism of international transmission of economic growth from the tourist generating country (the tourism services importer) to the MENA tourist receiving economy (the tourism services exporter) through trade and terms-of-trade movements without any technological progress, R-D activity or accumulation of human capital in the host economy.