Impact of Tourism Growth and FDI on Economic Growth: Evidence from South Asian Countries

Abstract

Nowadays, economic growth has again gained global attention because of the uncertainty in global economic conditions and attracts the focus of regulators and recent research studies. In this scenario, this study examines the role of tourism growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) on the economic growth of South Asian countries. This study has used the interest rate and population growth as the control variables. The secondary data has been extracted from the world development indicators (WDI) from 2001 to 2020. The fixed effect model (FEM) and generalized method of moments (GMM) are run to test the linkage among the variables. The results expose that tourism growth, FDI, interest rate, and population growth have a positive and significant effect on the economic growth in South Asian countries. The results provide guidelines to the regulators and furnish policies regarding economic growth for tourism growth.