This paper uses support vector regressions (SVRs) and Google search data to test whether observing Internet habits can provide insights into trends in tourist arrivals in Barbados. The empirical evidence suggests that Google Trends data may be used to pick up changing patterns and trends in tourist arrivals from the UK and Canada. In the case of the USA, the authors find no evidence to suggest that Google data add any significant information to what can be ‘learned’ from an autoregressive SVR.

This paper argues that length of stay is a reflection of the distance between the origin and destination country. Past interpretations of distance premised on spatial aspects. This study extends the dimensional space of distance to include socio-psychological dimensions, climate distance and economic distance. Our empirical analysis utilizes airport data covering over 350,000 pleasure tourists to Barbados from 144 countries. The results suggest that the length of stay of pleasure tourists to Barbados increases with geographic distance, cultural distance and climatic distance, but is inversely related to economic distance. We find no evidence that long-distance relationships (captured by transnational and diasporic relationships) affect tourist length of stay. Implications of these findings are provided.

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This paper examines the impact of economic misery on criminal activity the small island state, Barbados, using Markov-switching models. No evidence of a contemporaneous relationship between economic misery and crime was uncovered. On the other hand, Property and Theft of Motor crime respond to the state of misery with a lag of one period, supporting the criminal motivation effect. Economic misery is in the same regime as Property crime 50 percent of the time, and with Theft from Motor crime almost 60 percent of the time. There is a procyclical contemporaneous relationship between inflation and Property crime, lasting up to two periods. Unemployment's impact on Theft of Motor crime manifests after three periods, and supports the criminal opportunity hypothesis. Finally, Fraud-related crime and unemployment are concordant. Typical demand side policies to reduce the level of misery may not have the desired effect on crime, as reducing the unemployment rate or inflation rate respectively, could lead to an increase in the rate of crime, via the Phillips curve relationship. The most promising course of action may be supply side policies, designed to improve the long-run performance of the economy.

Strategic spillovers happen when one country's tax rate responds to tax cuts in other countries. My estimate of the size of strategic spillovers from corporate tax competition is one‐third of the size of consensus estimates. A one percentage point cut in the foreign tax rate results in a 0.23 percentage point cut in the home tax rate. I use two novel identification strategies. First, I use bilateral foreign investment to define how one country matters to another. Second, I use only tax reforms—359 reforms across 76 countries. These identification strategies are derived from a model of corporate tax competition.

PurposeThis study analyses how the socio-demographic profile of the tourist, trip-related characteristics, distance, and economic conditions in the source country affect pleasure tourists' length of stay behaviours in Barbados.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses “biggish” data (over 3.6 million observations), parametric models (OLS) and statistical learning models (regression trees) to develop a length of stay decision rule to segment pleasure tourists' length of stay. Our sample period is January 2004 to March 2013.FindingsThe analysis revealed a great deal of heterogeneity in the impact of the predictors across segments, which would be typically hidden from simple parametric approaches often used to model length of stay (such as OLS).Practical implicationsThe main implication is that conventional models of length of stay should be complemented with segmentation analyses to shed some light on the heterogeneous length of stay behaviours of specific market segments.Originality/valueMany studies on small tourism-specialising states focus on modelling aggregate arrivals. By modelling micro-data for Barbados, we provide insights on this aspect of tourism demand for small states. Second, very few studies use classification tools to analyse length of stay. The study contributes to the literature through its methodological approach.

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