nep-tur New Economics Papers
on Tourism Economics
Issue of 2011‒06‒25
three papers chosen by
Antonello Scorcu
University of Bologna

  1. Aggregation, Heterogeneous Autoregression and Volatility of Daily International Tourist Arrivals and Exchange Rates By Chia-Lin Chang; Michael McAleer
  2. Estimating the Impact of Whaling on Global Whale Watching By Hsiao-I Kuo; Chi-Chung Chen; Michael McAleer
  3. Rural Tourism Driving Regional Development in Tuscany. The Renaissance of the Countryside By Filippo Randelli; Patrizia Romei; Marco Tortora; Maria Tinacci Mossello

  1. By: Chia-Lin Chang (Department of Applied Economics, Department of Finance, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan); Michael McAleer (Econometrisch Instituut (Econometric Institute), Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen (Erasmus School of Economics) Erasmus Universiteit, Tinbergen Instituut (Tinbergen Institute).)
    Abstract: Tourism is a major source of service receipts for many countries, including Taiwan. The two leading tourism countries for Taiwan are Japan and 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, 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 (HAR) 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.
    Keywords: International tourist arrivals, exchange rates, exchange rate volatility, GARCH, GJR, EGARCH, HAR, long memory, temporal and spatial aggregation, daily and weekly effects, asymmetry, leverage.
    JEL: C22 F31 G18 G32
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:1113&r=tur
  2. By: Hsiao-I Kuo (Department of Senior Citizen Service Management Chaoyang University of Technology Taichung, Taiwan); Chi-Chung Chen (Department of Applied Economics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan); Michael McAleer (Econometrisch Instituut (Econometric Institute), Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen (Erasmus School of Economics), Erasmus Universiteit, Tinbergen Instituut (Tinbergen Institute).)
    Abstract: After the commercial whaling moratorium was enacted in 1986, whale watching became one of the fastest growing tourism industries worldwide. As whaling was regarded as an activity that is incompatible with whale watching, the possible resumption of commercial whaling caused an urgent need to investigate the potential negative effects of whaling on the whale-watching industry. We examine the potential impacts of whaling on the global whale-watching tourism industry using an unbalanced panel data model. The empirical results indicate that the resumption of commercial whaling has the potential for a negative effect on the global whale-watching industry, especially for nations that are engaged in commercial whaling.
    Keywords: Global whale watching, Commercial whaling, Delay-difference equation, Unbalanced panel data.
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:1123&r=tur
  3. By: Filippo Randelli (Università degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche); Patrizia Romei (Università degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche); Marco Tortora (Università degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche); Maria Tinacci Mossello (Università degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche)
    Abstract: After the crisis of the traditional agricultural system in the 50’s, starting from the 80’s rural tourism is driving the renaissance of Tuscan countryside. The empty spaces of rural areas, which characterise the agricultural landscape, show a new set of functions developed by and for the tourist field. The Tuscany Region was the first Italian region to recognize the new trend of the integrated rural development so that in 1985 it stated the first regional law on agritourism. In this context Tuscany is the one of the first Italian and European regions committed to the development of rural areas. This paper recognizes the leading role of Tuscany in the development of rural areas and tourism and shows the relationships between tourism and local sustainable development in rural areas through a case study. In the first part there is a historical analysis of the evolution of the tourism in rural areas, of the strengths of the Tuscan model in this field, and of the relationship between identity and local resources for the sustainable development of tourism (the topic of rural tourism may be analyzed from a local development point of view). In the second part there is the introduction of a case study developed in a rural area characterized by the “typical” Tuscan landscape, the presence of art cities, and a high-quality supply of services and products such as food and wine. The analysis is based on quantitative and qualitative methodologies that helped us outline the network of tourist centres and study tourism in rural Tuscany. Then there is an analysis of competition capacities and potentialities of the local area to understand if and how these depend more or less on the network structure or on local resources. At the end the paper underlines the strengths and weaknesses of rural tourism in Tuscany, one of the leading region of the European project NECSTOUR, and outlines possible future regional policies in support of the sector.
    Keywords: rural tourism, regional development, sustainable tourism, Tuscany
    JEL: O18 Q26 Q56 R11
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2011_11.rdf&r=tur

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