Tourism Income and Economic Growth Relationship In Mediterranean Countries: Bootstrap Panel Causality Test

After the Second World War, tourism, which has achieved great speed, is among the sectors that are important for the countries. The tourism sector increases foreign exchange reserves, especially in developing countries. Mediterranean countries have an important share in world tourism. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between tourism revenues and economic growth, using data from 12 Mediterranean countries 1995-2016. For this purpose, in the study, bootstrap panel causality analysis developed by Kónya (2006) was used after horizontal section dependency and heterogeneity tests. According to the results of the analysis, it is seen that only in Italy and Greece are the causalities towards the economic growth from tourism incomes. It has been determined that the reason for the economic incomes to tourism income is only in Slovenia. Other countries have not identified any causal relationship