Mediation Between Tourism Contribution and Economic Growth in the Greater Mekong Subregion

The objective of this paper is to determine the mediation between tourism contribution and economic growth in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) (i.e. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam). The sample period is semi-annual data from 1995 to 2013 and is also estimated by bootstrap panel cointegration, Panel Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares method and the Sobel test. The results show that the variables are cointegrated as three models; economic growth is running to tourism's total contribution to GDP and international tourism expenditure for passenger transport whereas international tourism expenditure for passenger transport is running to tourism's total contribution to GDP. Therefore, this study finds that international tourism expenditure for passenger transport is a mediator and has partial mediation. The GMS needs to develop every economic sector and improve the potential of the transport sector as a regional integration project which supports the sustainable development of the region.