Tourism and local growth in Italy

Economic theory and the empirical literature are not conclusive on the relationship between tourism and economic growth. In this paper we estimate the impact of foreign tourists' spending on value added per capita growth in the Italian provinces, using various econometric strategies. The overall results show that the effect is positive and statistically significant, but modest in economic terms. The impact is larger for the less developed provinces, and null for those that showed the highest tourist revenues per inhabitant at the beginning of the period, suggesting that congestion phenomena may occur.