This empirical study examines the tourism-led growth hypothesis for Croatia using quarterly data from 2000:1 to 2008:3. The Toda– Yamamoto long-run causality tests reveal positive unidirectional causality from real GDP to international tourism revenues, as well as positive unidirectional causality from real GDP to the real effective exchange rate. Thus, the results lend support for the economic-driven tourism growth hypothesis.

Given that tourism is a significant source of export revenues for Croatia, it is vital for policymakers to understand the factors affecting foreign tourism demand for Croatian destinations. This study provides long-run elasticity estimates associated with aggregate foreign tourism demand for Croatian destinations in the period 1994:1-2004:4 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. Foreign tourism demand is proxied by the aggregate number of foreign overnight stays in Croatia. The long-run elasticity estimates indicate that tourism demand is positive and highly elastic with respect to the income of tourist-generating countries. Moreover, tourism demand was adversely affected by the political conflicts in the 1990s. The real exchange rate and transportation costs are not statistically significant determinants of foreign tourism demand.

This research note examines the change in the degree of persistence in the Croatian tourism indicators, foreign arrivals, and overnight stays, due to the COVID-19 pandemic using recursive estimation of a fractional integration model. The results indicate that the shock from the COVID-19 pandemic can be viewed as permanent in nature. The policy response to restore tourism to its original trend should consider whether such policies proceed as in the past with the promotion of the traditional tourism growth model or support the transformation toward a more sustainable tourism model.

An econometric model of revenues from international tourism for the transition economy of Croatia is estimated over the period 1993:1 to 1999:4. It is found that European Union GDP and the real effective exchange rate are significant factors influencing Croatian tourism revenues. Moreover, the 1995 military action by Croatia to regain authority over the territories occupied in 1991 had an adverse effect on tourism revenues. There is also evidence of seasonal variation in tourism revenues, with the tourist season from July to September exerting the largest impact. Finally, the estimated econometric model is robust with respect to the model's residual diagnostics and stability of the regression coefficients.

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