Nowadays, there is competition in attracting film producers to screen their productions in specific locations, but at the same time, there is also a lack of data‐driven academic research that measures the effects of film industry on local tourism. This study evaluates the effects of film industry on tourism outcomes in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Using the synthetic control approach, we estimate the causal effect of a highly broadcasted TV series, Game of Thrones, on tourist arrivals. The use of such a data‐driven procedure is an important step towards identification‐based empirical work in tourism research as it enables us to build a credible synthetic counterfactual and to answer the “what if” type of questions. We find a robust and positive effect of filming the TV series in Dubrovnik on the number of tourist arrivals. Additionally, we show that there are positive spillover effects on other counties and the whole country. Placebo tests show that the estimated effects are relatively large when compared to other counties implying our results are not driven simply by chance.
Summary
The paper analyses health consequences of forced civilian displacement that occurred during the war in Croatia 1991–1995 which accompanied the demise of Yugoslavia. During the Serbo‐Croatian conflict a quarter of Croatian territory was ceded, 22000 people were killed and more than 500000 individuals were displaced. Using the Croatian Adult Health Survey 2003 we identify the causal effect of forced migration on various dimensions of measured and self‐assessed health. To circumvent the self‐selection into displacement, we adopt an instrumental variable approach where civilian casualties per county are used as an instrument for displacement. We find robust adverse effects on probability of suffering hypertension and tachycardia as well as on self‐assessed health and ‘Short form health survey’ health dimensions. Comparing ordinary least squares with instrumental variable estimates yields a conclusion of a positive selection into displacement with respect to latent health. Given the likely violation of the exclusion restriction, we use a method which allows the instrument to affect health outcomes directly and conclude that, even with substantial departures from the exclusion restriction, displacement still adversely affects health.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.