Plastic Surgery is Not Peanuts: Economic Growth and Dependency

Milica Z. Bookman and Karla R. Bookman

Chapter Chapter 2 in Medical Tourism in Developing Countries, 2007, pp 21-39 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Medical tourism entails the splicing of two sectors, medicine and tourism. Both are service industries that face a high income elasticity of demand. Both are labor intensive and both rely heavily on the Internet to spread information. However, medicine is more high tech than tourism and has higher barriers to entry while tourism has higher price elasticity of demand. One is precise and involves rational decision making, and the other ephemeral, resting on imagination and the exotic and the transport into something outside of one’s own culture.1 Medical tourism thus walks on two legs. Each leg is necessary and neither is sufficient in the creation of a successful medical tourism sector. On their own, both tourism and medicine are high-growth industries in many parts of the world. This chapter argues that when spliced, their potential for growth is more than the sum of their parts.

Keywords: Direct Foreign Investment; Foreign Investment; Price Elasticity; Foreign Currency; Tourist Industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-60565-7_2

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230605657_2

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