Measuring persistence in Croatian tourism: evidence from the Adriatic region

This study examines the degree of persistence in foreign tourist arrivals and overnight stays for seven Croatian coastal counties over the period January 1998 to December 2013 using fractional integration techniques. Our findings reveal that the respective regional tourism indicators exhibit seasonal unit roots which require seasonal first differences to render the respective time series stationary. With respect to the long-run evolution of the respective time series, both the parametric and semi-parametric fractional integration approaches show the degree of persistence is greater than zero, but significantly less than one for the majority of the coastal counties. Impulse response analysis reveals indeed shocks to the deseasonalized time series, either foreign tourist arrivals or foreign tourist overnight stays, appear short-lived with the exception of Istria and Primorje-Gorski kotar counties. Policy implications of the results are also discussed.     

A seasonal analysis of Asian tourist arrivals to Australia

Rapid economic growth in South-East and East Asia has seen a surge in tourist arrivals from this region to Australia in the 1990s, prior to the currency crisis in late 1997. The purpose of the paper is to use Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models to explain the nonstationary seasonally unadjusted quarterly tourist arrivals from Hong Kong and Singapore to Australia from 1975(1) to 1996(4). As the tourist arrivals series display strong seasonal patterns, deterministic and stochastic seasonality are examined as possible explanations for variations in the international tourist arrivals series. The Hylleberg et al. (Journal of Econometrics, 99, pp. 215-38, 1990) test for seasonal unit roots is used to examine stochastic seasonality in the various series.     

MEGA‐EVENTS AND TOURISM: THE CASE OF BRAZIL

Mega‐sporting events such as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup are expensive affairs. Host countries often justify the spending required to stage these events by predicting that mega‐events will draw large numbers of tourists. This paper analyzes monthly foreign tourist arrivals into Brazil between 2003 and 2015 and finds that the 2014 FIFA World Cup increased foreign tourism by roughly 1 million visitors. This number far exceeded expectations, but we show that roughly a quarter of this increase in foreign tourism was caused by the fortuitous advancement of Argentina's national team, and potential hosts should not count on the event to consistently produce out‐sized tourism figures. We conclude that on‐field results can greatly influence FIFA World Cup tourism. (JEL L83, F14)     

‘I’ve been to Bali too’ (and I will be going back): are terrorist shocks to Bali's tourist arrivals permanent or transitory?

International visitor arrivals to Bali are examined using univariate and panel Lagrange multiplier (LM) unit root tests with one and two structural breaks to ascertain if shocks to the time path of tourist arrivals are permanent or transitory. The univariate LM unit root tests with one and two structural breaks fail to reject the null hypothesis of a unit root in international visitor arrivals to Bali. However, the panel LM unit root tests with one and two structural breaks applied to a panel of Bali's 11 major source markets reject the null and support the alternative hypothesis of a joint trend-stationary series with transitory shocks. This result suggests that, the effects of the recent terrorist acts on Bali on the growth path of tourist arrivals from major markets are only transitory and that as a consequence Bali's tourism sector is sustainable in the long run.     

基于异质面板模型的我国省际旅游业发展与经济增长研究

利用1999—2007年中国31个省市的入境旅游人次、国际旅游(外汇)收入、国内旅游人次和国内旅游收入四个指标的面板数据衡量旅游业发展水平,并运用异质面板协整方法检验中国省际旅游业发展与经济增长之间的关系。研究发现:国内旅游与入境旅游的发展对全国及所有省市的经济增长均有显著的正效应,其中,入境旅游对经济增长的促进作用更显著;与此同时,经济增长和入境旅游人次、国际旅游(外汇)收入和国内旅游收入存在长期单向Granger因果关系,表明经济增长也推动着入境旅游和国内旅游的发展。     

The brokerage system in the brick kiln industry in Tamil Nadu,India

We have led a survey in brick kilns in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, to study the phenomenon of intermediation in the process of recruiting seasonal migrants who are employed for implementing the production. Henceforth, we show that intermediaries play a central role in this industry by simultaneously coordinating the actions of the supply and demand of labor and credit in the interlinked credit-labor market. The role of brokers in this industry is ambiguous in the sense that they are at the same time close to workers and yet they are subjugated to employers. There are two kinds of brokers: the broker-brokers and the broker-workers. The former have better bargaining power than the later, so they are in a better position to defend their employers' interest than the broker-workers.     

基于月度数据的景区客流预测优化研究——以黄山风景区为例

采用当前使用极为广泛的9种方法,利用黄山风景区24年（1987年1月—2010年12月）的月度客流数据进行2年时间尺度的预测,并采用均方根误差（RMSE）、平均绝对误差（MAE）、平均绝对百分误差（MAPE）和希尔不等系数（TIC）等4个预测性能指标对预测模型进行比较优化,发挥旅游客流预报对于景区管理者的决策支持作用。研究结果表明：ARIMA方法在预测性能4个指标中有3个最优,LS-SVM方法的MAPE表现最优。而其他方法在本研究中则未表现出明显的优势。     

Short–run electricity demand forecasts in Maharashtra

This paper, has tried to forecast monthly maximum electricity demand for the state Maharashtra, India, using Multiplicative Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (MSARIMA) method for seasonally unadjusted monthly data spanning from April 1980 to June 1999. The forecasted period is 18 months ahead from June 1999. This study's basic findings are that the series does not reveal any drastic change for the forecasted period. It continues to follow the same trend along with the seasonal variation.     

Forecasting tourist arrivals using origin country macroeconomics

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.     

The brokerage system in the brick kiln industry in Tamil Nadu, India

We have led a survey in brick kilns in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, to study the phenomenon of intermediation in the process of recruiting seasonal migrants who are employed for implementing the production. Henceforth, we show that intermediaries play a central role in this industry by simultaneously coordinating the actions of the supply and demand of labor and credit in the interlinked credit-labor market. The role of brokers in this industry is ambiguous in the sense that they are at the same time close to workers and yet they are subjugated to employers. There are two kinds of brokers: the broker-brokers and the broker-workers. The former have better bargaining power than the later, so they are in a better position to defend their employers' interest than the broker-workers.     

Corporate social responsibility and strategic trade policy: An endogenous timing game and its policy implications

This study incorporates the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of a domestic firm and analyses strategic trade policy towards a foreign firm in a different market structure. We show that the tariff rate under a foreign (domestic) firm's leadership is lowest when the degree of CSR is large (small). We also show that the foreign firm's leadership yields the highest welfare when the degree of CSR is intermediate, while the domestic firm's leadership yields the highest welfare otherwise. In an endogenous‐timing game, we show that a simultaneous‐move outcome is the unique equilibrium when the degree of CSR is small; thus, it is never socially desirable. We also show that the domestic firm's leadership can be an equilibrium, which results in the highest welfare when the degree of CSR is large. Finally, when the degree of CSR is large, collusive behaviours between the domestic and foreign firms can increase welfare.     

Caste,Kinship, and Life Course: Rethinking Women's Work and Agency in Rural South India

This paper reexamines the linkages between women's work, agency, and well-being based on a household survey and in-depth interviews conducted in rural Tamil Nadu in 2009 and questions the prioritization of workforce participation as a path to gender equality. It emphasizes the need to unpack the nature of work performed by and available to women and its social valuation, as well as women's agency, particularly its implications for decision making around financial and nonfinancial household resources in contexts of socioeconomic change. The effects of work participation on agency are mediated by factors like age and stage in the life cycle, reproductive success, and social location – especially of caste – from which women enter the workforce.     

AGGREGATION,HETEROGENEOUS AUTOREGRESSION AND VOLATILITY OF DAILY INTERNATIONAL TOURIST ARRIVALS AND EXCHANGE RATES*

Tourism is a major source of service receipts for many countries, including Taiwan. The two leading tourism countries for Taiwan are Japan and the USA, which are sources of short‐ and long‐haul tourism, respectively. As a strong domestic currency can have adverse effects on international tourist arrivals through the price effect, daily data from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 2008 are used to model the world price, exchange rates, and tourist arrivals from the world, the USA and Japan to Taiwan, and their associated volatility. Inclusion of the exchange rate and its volatility captures approximate daily and weekly price and price volatility effects on world, US and Japanese tourist arrivals to Taiwan. The heterogeneous autoregressive model is used to approximate the slowly decaying correlations associated with the long‐memory properties in daily and weekly exchange rates and international tourist arrivals, to test whether alternative short‐ and long‐run estimates of conditional volatility are sensitive to the long‐memory in the conditional mean, to examine asymmetry and leverage in volatility, and to examine the effects of temporal and spatial aggregation. The approximate price and price volatility effects tend to be different, with the exchange rate typically having the expected negative impact on tourist arrivals to Taiwan, whereas exchange rate volatility can have positive or negative effects on tourist arrivals to Taiwan. For policy purposes, the empirical results suggest that an arbitrary choice of data frequency or spatial aggregation will not lead to robust findings as they are generally not independent of the level of aggregation used.     

Nontourism services in Barbados: 1970–97

This paper initially refers to some of the classifications of services used by various authors, followed by the components that comprise nontourism services in Barbados and their linkages to the other sectors of the Barbados economy. Using regression analysis, variables that may influence nontourism services in the long and short run are then identified. In the long run, the variables that impact nontourism services are relative real incomes, tourist arrivals, merchandise imports, commercial bank credit, relative prices, and government policy. The short run is influenced by relative real incomes, tourist arrivals, and merchandise imports. Since tourist arrivals influence nontourism services in the long and short run, Barbados must still focus on tourism activity to maximize its foreign exchange potential from nontourism services.     

How resilient is La Réunion in terms of international tourism attractiveness: an assessment from unit root tests with structural breaks from 1981-2015

Even if local policymakers increasingly claim that tourism is one of the key factors of future economic development for the French small island La Réunion, international tourist arrivals are observed to be locked in a stagnation phase since the beginning of the 2000s. Starting from this stylized fact, this article aims to study if this phenomenon results from major external events hurting this economy regularly. Next, by using univariate unit root procedures with structural breaks, we test for evidence of permanent or transitory effects of external shocks on international tourist inflows (total, by source markets, and by category) over the period 1981–2015. Finally, the empirical analysis allows us to reject the null of a unit root. Then, stagnation of tourism arrivals to La Réunion is not due to exogenous shocks but probably results from endogenous impediments within the domestic tourism industry and unsuitable public policies.     

Environmental Regulation: An Incentive for Foreign Direct Investment

Empirical evidence has so far failed to confirm that lenient environmental regulation attracts investment from polluting firms. In a Cournot duopoly with a foreign firm and a domestic firm, we show that the foreign firm may want to relocate to the domestic country with stricter environmental regulation, when the move raises its rival domestic firm's cost by sufficiently more than its own. The domestic (foreign) country's welfare is (usually) lower with foreign direct investment.     

The impact of German-speaking online media on tourist arrivals in popular tourist destinations for Europeans

This empirical study analyzes the relationship between the sentiments in online media with regard to travel destinations and corresponding tourist arrivals. We expect the media reports on political and economic instability and turmoil to enhance tourist arrival nowcasts and forecasts, as they can probably complement them with information on disruptions and shocks. Therefore, we believe this research will help to build better models for tourism demand nowcasting and forecasting. We use the sentiment in the German-speaking online media because the German-speaking region is the most populated in Europe and has the largest group of travelers visiting destinations in and around Europe.

An artificial neural network is used to analyze the mood of the media. The software classifies news items regarding potential tourist destinations with either positive or negative labels. The number of positive and negative news items is used to build sentiment indices for popular tourist destinations for Europeans.

Our results show strong correlations between the mood concerning tourist destinations and tourist arrivals in these countries. Indeed, disruptions and shocks prevalent in the news are reflected in similar ratios in both tourist arrivals and sentiment indices. These results can be used as a new explanatory variable for tourism demand modelling.     

Determinants of sovereign credit risk: the case of Russia

The article analyses external and domestic determinants of Russian sovereign credit risk from January 2001 to May 2015. The analysis is conducted in a time series framework, involving the ARDL approach and VECM model. External risk factors outperform domestic fundamentals. The VIX index and oil prices are the most important factors, followed by the Fitch credit rating changes and TED spread. There is evidence for the piggyback effect by S&P whose credit rating changes are driven by Fitch Ratings and Moody’s decisions. Among macroeconomic fundamentals only exchange rate dynamics and foreign reserves appear significant. The importance of the fundamentals further decreases when Granger (no) causality tests are conducted. The findings reveal a limited role of domestic macroeconomic policy in curbing Russian sovereign credit risk.     

Domestic R&D,Foreign Direct Investment and Welfare

This paper provides a new rationale to examine the two‐way relationship between domestic research and development (R&D) and foreign direct investment (FDI), as well as their impacts on domestic welfare. Our analysis is based on the strategic interaction in cost‐reducing investment decisions between domestic firms and a foreign firm, which is different from the common factors that are discussed in the literature such as spillovers and technology sourcing. Our results are as follows. We show that domestic R&D investment may either increase or decrease the foreign firm's FDI incentives. Further, depending on the marginal cost of domestic firms, domestic R&D incentives can always increase regardless of the effects of domestic R&D investment on the foreign firm's FDI decision. Finally, we find that domestic welfare improves under domestic cost reduction if the slope of the marginal cost of domestic R&D investment is sufficiently small.     

Testing fractional integration with monthly data

Seasonal roots can help to explain the seasonal fluctuations in macroeconomic time series. In this paper we concentrate on monthly data and look at different versions of Robinson’s (1994) tests for testing unit roots and other fractionally integrated hypotheses when the root is located at zero and/or at the seasonal frequencies. A Monte Carlo experiment is carried out to check the power of these tests against different fractional alternatives, and an empirical application, using Spanish monthly data for the consumer price index, is also carried out in the article.