Turkish tourism, exchange rates and income

Abstract

This study examines the effects of the exchange rate and income on Turkish tourism trade balance (TB) using quarterly data for the period 1998-2011. The authors use tourism trade-weighted exchange rate indices and foreign income derived from country-based tourism trade. They employ Johansen's maximum likelihood technique to estimate the long-run effects of the exchange rate and income on tourism, and employ an error correction model to analyse the short-run effects. The empirical results suggest that income is the most significant variable in explaining tourism TB in the long run. The exchange rate and foreign income positively affect the TB, while domestic income negatively influences it. In the short-run, however, domestic income is the only significant factor. The authors also find no evidence of a J-curve effect in the Turkish tourism TB. These findings are robust to using nominal values.