The relevance of international tourism and natural resource rents in economic growth: Fresh evidence from MINT countries in the digital era

The Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey (MINT) economies are recognized to be bedevilled with many obstacles hampering the economic expansion. In the meantime, many of these problems have not been comprehensively scrutinized in the context of the countries. In recent years, natural resources and tourism development have significantly increased in MINT economies. This study scrutinizes the relationship between natural resource rent, mobile use, foreign direct investment, international tourism, and economic growth in a balanced panel data of four MINT nations from 1971 to 2019. The key finding of this study shows that there is a positive and significant impact of foreign direct investment, natural resource rent, mobile use, and international tourism on MINT's economic growth. Furthermore, the tourism-led growth hypothesis is supported empirically in the case of MINT nations. Furthermore, the Granger causality analysis demonstrates that unidirectional causality is discovered from economic growth to tourism. The study recommends that MINT nations implement some practical tourism strategies to push up economic development, and in turn economic growth will positively contribute to the tourism sector.