Revisiting the tourism-inequality nexus: evidence from a panel of developed and developing economies

Junwook Chi

Current Issues in Tourism, 2021, vol. 24, issue 6, 755-767

Abstract: This paper investigates the tourism-inequality nexus across developed and developing economies. Using the data from 1995 through 2015, we apply a dynamic panel cointegration approach to examine the relationship among income inequality, GDP per capita, trade openness, international tourism receipts, and capital investment in the travel industry. The results show that GDP per capita has a negative impact on income inequality in developed countries, while it has a positive effect on income inequality in developing countries. This study provides empirical evidence that the long-run relationship between tourism revenue and income inequality can differ across developed and developing economies. In developing economies, income inequality worsens as tourism revenue increases, start to improve once the first turning point is reached but after the second turning point begin to worsen again. These findings support an N-shape Kuznets Curve between tourism development and income inequality. However, in developed economies, tourism revenue has an insignificant effect on income inequality. In addition, capital investment in the travel industry has a significant short-run effect on income inequality for developing economies, while it is not statistically significant for developed economies. These findings provide important implications for the policies of tourism and income inequality in developed and developing economies.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13683500.2020.1743243 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rcitxx:v:24:y:2021:i:6:p:755-767

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rcit20

DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2020.1743243

Access Statistics for this article

Current Issues in Tourism is currently edited by Jennifer Tunstall

More articles in Current Issues in Tourism from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().