International tourism and economic growth: the case of Morocco and Tunisia

This study proposes to examine the impact of tourism activity on the economic growth of Morocco and Tunisia. We contribute here to the empirical literature on the tourism-led growth hypothesis (TLGH), by adopting the error correction model framework, the cointegration and Granger causality tests between real tourism receipts, real effective exchange rate and economic growth in Morocco and Tunisia, for the annual period 1980–2010; two main results emerge from this analysis. First, contrary to the predictions of the TLGH, the Granger test results show that this hypothesis is only valid for short term in the two countries of Maghreb. Second, the results show that in the long term, there is a strong unidirectional causality from economic growth to international tourism receipts.