Granger Causality Analysis of the Economic Cycles of the Tourism Industry and the EU Regional Economy

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The relationship between tourism and economic growth has become an important topic of many empirical studies, and various models of analysis can help us understand the contribution of tourism to economic growth, due to the methodological approaches used by researchers. This article analyzed the causal relationship between the economic cycles of the tourism industry and those of regional economic growth between 2004-2016 using the Granger causality test and validated all the causal hypotheses between tourism and economic growth for 21 countries and 158 of regions in the European Union. KEYWORDS: tourism industry, EU regional economy, economic cycles