scholarly journals Geopolitical-Risk and Economic Policy–Uncertainty Impacts on Tourist Flows from Neighboring Countries: A Wavelet Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 13751
Author(s):  
Alisa Kazakova ◽  
Insin Kim

This paper investigates the nexus of geopolitical risks (GPRs), economic policy uncertainty (EPU), and tourist arrivals in South Korea. Specifically, this research examines whether arrivals from neighboring tourism source countries (i.e., China and Japan) are influenced by geopolitical events and economic volatilities in South Korea. To establish the research purpose, we investigated the relationships among GPRs, EPU, and tourism demand by using monthly data from January 2003 to November 2019. Additionally, innovative techniques (continuous wavelets, wavelet coherency, and wavelet phase difference) were employed, which allow the decomposition of time series considering different time and frequency components. The results demonstrate inconsistent and heterogeneous co-movements between variables that are localized across different time periods and frequencies. In addition, we detected several significant coherencies that prove the important role of GPR and EPU in explaining changes in the numbers of tourists arriving in South Korea from China and Japan. In terms of time domain, negative and positive correlations in tourism demand were detected, meaning that economic and geopolitical shocks may not always lead to negative consequences. From the frequency domain, the causal effects of GPR mostly appear to have short- to mid-run implications, with almost no relationship in the low-frequency band, whereas EPU holds a heterogeneous influence varying short-term to long-term, including higher to lower frequencies. Results show the resilience of the tourism industry against the transient effects of economic and geopolitical shocks. Tourists become adversely affected by external events such as geopolitical risks and economic uncertainties, but the impact is not consistent over time for tourists from countries neighboring Korea. The findings provide a deeper understanding of how crisis events, including political instability and economic fluctuations, can affect inbound tourism in geographically and historically interrelated countries. Therefore, to minimize the negative effect on tourism demand, it is important for practitioners to consider potential external threats when making forecasts.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudeshna Ghosh

Purpose This paper aims to consider the role of geopolitical risk in explaining tourism demand in India, a major tourist destination of the Asian region. Furthermore, the study also considers how in addition to geopolitical risk, economic policy uncertainty, economic growth, exchange rate, inflation and trade openness impact tourism demand. Design/methodology/approach The Bayer and Hanck (2013) method of cointegration is applied to explore the relationship between geopolitical risk and tourism demand. Furthermore, the study has also used the auto distributed lag model to determine whether there is a long-run cointegrating association between tourism demand, geopolitical risk, economic policy uncertainty, economic growth, exchange rate and trade openness. Finally, the vector error correction model confirms the direction of causality across the set of the major variables. Findings This paper finds that geopolitical risk adversely impacts inbound international travel to India. This study also obtains the consistency of the results across different estimation techniques controlling for important macro variables. The Granger causality test confirms the unidirectional causality from geopolitical risk to tourism and further from economic uncertainty to tourism. The findings from the study confirm that geopolitical risks have long-term repercussions on the tourism sector in India. The results indicate that there is an urgent need to develop a pre-crisis management plan to protect the aura of Indian tourism. The tourism business houses should develop skilful marketing strategies in the post-crisis to boost the confidence of the tourists. Research limitations/implications This paper provides valuable practical implications to tourism business houses. The tourism business houses can explore geopolitical risk measure and economic policy uncertainty measure to analyse the demand for international tourism in India. Further, the major stakeholders can establish platforms to help tourists to overcome the fear associated with geopolitical risk. Originality/value This study is the first of its kind to explore the geopolitical risks and their long-run consequences in the context of tourism in India. The study puts emphasis on the role of national policy to maintain peace otherwise it would be detrimental to tourism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (8) ◽  
pp. 1344-1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cem Işık ◽  
Ercan Sirakaya-Turk ◽  
Serdar Ongan

The global economic outlook is more uncertain than ever before and sensitive to uncertainties related to a variety of economic policies decisions of all stakeholders and governments. These perceived uncertainties may be the culprit in shrinking the size of overall economic activity. Under increasing uncertainties, travel and vacation plans of consumers can be canceled or postponed. Therefore, policy-related economic uncertainties are expected to affect tourism demand beyond well-established economic and noneconomic factors. In this study, we explore the efficacy and the impact of the economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index in predicting the tourism demand on international tourist arrivals (a measure of tourism demand) to the United States from Mexico and Canada over the period of January 1996–September 2017. The findings of the study reveal that EPU is a significant predictor as increases in the EPU index lead to decreases in tourism demand to the United States. Canadian tourists seem to be more sensitive to EPUs. Increases in the EPU index cause them to reduce Canadians’ vacations to the United States proportionally more than the Mexicans. To enhance the explanatory power of current models, the uncertainty can be a theoretically significant construct thus needs to be included when calibrating demand models.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 5866
Author(s):  
Muhammad Khalid Anser ◽  
Qasim Raza Syed ◽  
Hooi Hooi Lean ◽  
Andrew Adewale Alola ◽  
Munir Ahmad

Since the turn of twenty first century, economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and geopolitical risk (GPR) have escalated across the globe. These two factors have both economic and environmental impacts. However, there exists dearth of literature that expounds the impact of EPU and GPR on environmental degradation. This study, therefore, probes the impact of EPU and GPR on ecological footprint (proxy for environmental degradation) in selected emerging economies. Cross-sectional dependence test, slope heterogeneity test, Westerlund co-integration test, fully modified least ordinary least square estimator, dynamic OLS estimator, and augmented mean group estimator are employed to conduct the robust analyses. The findings reveal that EPU and non-renewable energy consumption escalate ecological footprint, whereas GPR and renewable energy plunge ecological footprint. In addition, findings from the causality test reveal both uni-directional and bi-directional causality between a few variables. Based on the findings, we deduce several policy implications to accomplish the sustainable development goals in emerging economies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 239 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 957-981 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Clausen ◽  
Alexander Schlösser ◽  
Christopher Thiem

Abstract This paper analyzes spillovers and the macroeconomic effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in Europe over the last two decades. Drawing on the newspaper-based uncertainty indices by Baker et al. (2016, Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty. Quarterly Journal of Economics 131 (4): 1593–1636), we first use the Diebold and Yilmaz (2014 On the Network Topology of Variance Decompositions: Measuring the Connectedness of Financial Firms. Journal of Econometrics 182 (1): 119–134) connectedness index methodology to investigate the static and dynamic patterns of EPU spillovers. We find substantial spillovers across the European countries. Over time, Germany in particular has become increasingly connected to the other economies. In a second step, we investigate the economic impact of EPU shocks using a structural VAR. The detrimental influence of uncertainty turns out to be regime-dependent. We identify a pre-crisis, a crisis and a post-crisis regime, and the effect is only significant in the former two. Finally, the impact of EPU shocks is also heterogeneous across the monetary union’s most important members.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-476
Author(s):  
Nithya Shankar ◽  
Bill Francis

Purpose The paper aims to investigate the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) (i.e. uncertainty due to government policies) on fine wine prices. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses the Baker et al. (2016) monthly news-based measure of EPU for the leading wine markets: the USA, the UK, France, Germany and China in conjunction with monthly fine wine pricing data from the London International Vintners Exchange (Liv-ex). The wine sub-indices used are the Liv-ex 500 (Bordeaux), Burgundy 150, Champagne 50, Rhone 100, Italy 100, California 50, Port 50 and Rest of the World 50. The Prais–Winsten and Cochrane–Orcutt regressions are used for our analyses to correct for effects of serial correlation. Time lags are chosen based on the appropriate information criterion. Findings Changes in EPU levels negatively impact changes in the Liv-ex 500 index for all our leading wine markets except France, the Champagne 50 index for the UK and the Burgundy 150 and the Rhone 100 indices for Germany, with the effects being significant for at least up to a quarter before EPU is detected. The authors did not find significant results for the EPU of France. Practical implications The paper aims to provide insights into whether EPU creates opportunities or threats for investors and wineries. Originality/value A forward-looking news-based EPU measure is used to gain insights into how the different Liv-ex sub-indices react to increases in uncertainty centered around government policies across a sample of different countries.


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