In this article, we study the effect of ICT on tourism demand in nine major tourist destinations based on visitor arrivals. Mobile and broadband subscriptions are used to proxy for ICT. Additionally, we account for price, source country’s income, and the destination’s income. Balanced panels for the period 1995–2017 and 2002–2017 are used for mobile and broadband subscriptions, respectively. The pooled mean group approach is used for estimation. The results indicate a 1% increase in mobile subscriptions and broadband would increase international visitor arrivals by 0.04% and 0.11%, respectively. The elasticity coefficients of price and income are −0.71 and 1.58, respectively, based on the mobile subscription model, and −0.88 and 1.83, respectively, based on broadband subscription. The destination’s income has only a short-run positive association with tourism demand. The causality results indicate that ICT cause tourism demand, and support for technology-led growth hypothesis in the major tourist destinations.

In this study, we estimate inbound international tourism demand models at the individual source market-destination and overall destination levels for Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu from 2002Q1 to 2016Q2 and Samoa from 2002Q4 to 2015Q3. Tourism demand is measured by visitor arrivals, tourism prices, the source country's real GDP, tourism prices in substitute destinations, seasonality and structural breaks, all of which are considered plausible determinants. The models are estimated using the ARDL-bounds approach, structural breaks are identified using the Bai and Perron break test, and seasonality is tested using the US Census Bureau's X-13 ARIMA-SEATS methodology. The study is important because it presents new evidence on price, income, and substitute price sensitivity, word of mouth, seasonality, and structural-breaks effects in Pacific island destinations.

We examine whether tourism sector development measured by visitor arrivals per capita has asymmetric growth effects in the Cook Islands using quarterly data from 2010Q1 to 2016Q3. Asymmetric cointegration, long-run elasticities, and dynamic multipliers are estimated using the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model developed by Shin et al. Asymmetric causality testing is done using the asymmetric vector autoregression approach with insights from Hatemi-J. We identify structural breaks using the Lee and Strazicich multiple endogenous structural break unit root test. The results indicate that a 1% increase in visitor arrivals would increase gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by 0.92%, whereas a 1% decrease in visitor arrivals would decrease GDP per capita by 0.34%. The identified breaks, 2013Q2 and 2015Q3, are positive and significant in the short run only. The causality result confirms a bidirectional association, thus mutually reinforcing the asymmetric relationship between visitor arrivals and economic growth.

In this paper, we explore the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) and tourism on per worker output over the period 1960-2016 by using an augmented Solow (Quart J Econ 70(1): 65-94, 1956) framework estimated through the autoregressive distributed lag procedure for cointegration (Pesaran et al. in J Appl Econ 16(3):289-326, 2001). The results show that mobile cellular subscriptions (measure of ICT pervasiveness) and visitor arrivals as a percent of workers (measure of tourism) are cointegrated and positive, however, only ICT is statistically significant in the long-run. The long-run elasticity coefficient of ICT and tourism is 0.03 and 0.05, respectively.

Both Bangladesh and India are among the top recipient of remittances in absolute terms. However, in relative terms -remittances as a per cent of GDP -the two countries stand at 6.1% and 2.8%, respectively, well below the levels of the top 10 recipients. In this article, we explore the effect of remittances on the total factor productivity (TFP) growth considering Bangladesh and India, as reference countries over the periods 1980-2012 and 1977-2012, respectively. We examine the presence of a long-run association between remittances and TFP using a number of tests. The results indicate that remittances have threshold effects on TFP growth in both countries. Despite the two countries receiving substantial amount of remittances, we note that Bangladesh has a U-shaped relationship whereas India has an inverted U-shaped relationship with TFP growth. For Bangladesh, a minimum threshold of remittances (% GDP) is 5.3% and for India, a tipping point of remittances (% GDP) is at 1.8%. The causality tests confirm a bidirectional effect, which implies that remittances and TFP growth are mutually reinforcing. Interestingly, while the two economies have similar remittances impact in regards to causality, the study highlights two different tipping points of remittances.