Bruno Eeckels

Tourism income and economic growth in Greece: empirical evidence from their cyclical components.

This paper examines the relationship between the cyclical components of Greek GDP and international tourism income for Greece for the period 1976–2004. Using spectral analysis the authors find that cyclical fluctuations of GDP have a length of about nine years and that international tourism income has a cycle of about seven years. The volatility of tourism income is more than eight times the volatility of the Greek GDP cycle. VAR analysis shows that the cyclical component of tourism income is significantly influencing the cyclical component of GDP in Greece. The findings support the tourism-led economic growth hypothesis and are of particular interest and importance to policy makers, financial analysts and investors dealing with the Greek tourism industry.

Forecasting tourist arrivals using origin country macroeconomics

ABSTRACT This study utilizes both disaggregated data and macroeconomic indicators in order to examine the importance of the macroeconomic environment of origin countries for analysing destinations’ tourist arrivals. In particular, it is the first study to present strong empirical evidence that both of these features in tandem provide statistically significant information of tourist arrivals in Greece. The forecasting exercises presented in our analysis show that macroeconomic indicators conducive to better forecasts are mainly origin country-specific, thus highlighting the importance of considering the apparent sharp national contrasts among origin countries when investigating domestic tourist arrivals. Given the extent of the dependency of the Greek economy on tourism income and also the perishable nature of the tourist product itself, results have important implications for policymakers in Greece.

A Dynamic Correlation Approach of the Swiss Tourism Income

The tourism sector is one of the most significant sectors in the modern world economy. However, despite its significance, the economics of tourism has not been given much attention, at least when compared with more core economics areas such as macroeconomics or econometric theory and methods, (Papatheodorou 1999). Furthermore, within the economics of tourism literature, econometric tools are rather limited, for example, in comparison to those applied in macroeconomics. However, in recent years, the number of papers using econometric methods and tools in tourism research has increased significantly. Several authors already employ standard econometric tools such as ARIMA modeling, Cointegration and Error Correction Mechanisms for forecasting purposes and to measure the long-run relationship between tourism and GDP, and when data is not available, or of low quality, Computable General Equilibrium models are implemented to assess the impact of tourism on other sectors. See, inter alia, Ballaguer and Catavella-Jorda (2002), Dritsakis (2004), Durbarry (2004), Papatheodorou and Song (2005), Narayan (2004), Sugiyarto et al. (2003), Wyer et al. (2003). Reviewing the relevant literature one can realize that the vast majority of econometric research in tourism is conducted almost exclusively in the time domain while frequency-domain (spectral and cross-spectral) methods are rather the exception. For example, out of 121 studies referring to modeling and forecasting of the tourism demand, only one (Coshall 2000) apart from seasonality modeling, applied frequency-domain analysis, as it is evident from a review made by Song and Li (2008) of post 2,000 research papers on the issue. In his research, Coshall (2000) found that cycles of passenger flows from UK to France, Belgium and The Netherlands depend on cycles in exchange rates, not on the GDP cycle.

Option listing, returns and volatility: evidence from Greece

This study examines the effect of the first introduction of Greek stock options (Greek Telecommunication Organisation, Intracom, National Bank of Greece and Alpha Bank) on stock prices and volatility for the period 1999 to 2002. We examine the asymmetric information hypothesis using a standard event study methodology and asymmetric Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) type models. Event study results indicate that abnormal returns existed in the prelisting period, but tend to disappear in the post listing period. Asymmetric component Threshold Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (TGARCH) models with Generalized Error Distribution (GED) show that the introduction of stock options has led to increased volatility (positive effect) for Greek Telecommunication Organisation, Intracom and National Bank of Greece only (Alpha Bank shows a positive but insignificant effect). We argue that our results provide support to the asymmetric information hypothesis, suggesting that the Greek market has become more efficient after the introduction of stock options.

The tourism and economic growth enigma: Examining an ambiguous relationship through multiple prisms

This article revisits the ambiguous relationship between tourism and economic growth, providing a comprehensive study of destinations across the globe which takes into account the key dynamics that influence tourism and economic performance. We focus on 113 countries over the period 1995 to 2014, clustered, for the first time, around six criteria that reflect their economic, political, and tourism dimensions. A panel vector autoregressive model is employed, which, in contrast to previous studies, allows the data to reveal any tourism-economy interdependencies across these clusters, without imposing a priori the direction of causality. Overall, the economic-driven tourism growth hypothesis seems to prevail in countries which are developing, nondemocratic, highly bureaucratic and have low tourism specialization. Conversely, bidirectional relationships are established for economies that are stronger, democratic and with higher levels of government effectiveness. Thus, depending on the economic, political, and tourism status of a destination, different policy implications apply.