Abstract:

Tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world. Therefore, tourism revenues are an important component of national income for many countries. Tourism is a sector that has a high degree of influence with not only its direct tourism revenues, but also in the way of its exteriority and multiplier effect. Tourism activates many different other sector directly and indirectly. For this reason, some economic benefits are revealed in countries where tourism activities are developed and tourism revenues are increased.Some of those are; income generating effect of tourism, its contribution to employment, its positive effect on the balance of payments and foreign currency inflows and It helps to close the foreign trade deficit. In this study, the relationship between tourism revenues and national income in Mediterranean countries have examined. A panel data set was set up for the period of 2005-2019 that based on those 14 sovereign and neighboring countries’ annual tourism revenues and national income. The data has been tested by using Breusch Pagan LM cross-section independence test, Pesseran unit root test, Westerlund cointegration test, Granger causality test, Hausman test and Pooled Mean Group Estimator (PMGE). The findings of the research indicate that there is a significant relationship between national income and tourism revenues in the Mediterranean countries for the period of 2005-2019 and in the short term, it is revealed that 1% increase in tourism revenues will increase the national income 0,24 in the long term 1% increase in tourism revenues will increase the national income 0,59.

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