The permanent or transitory nature of shocks to tourism expenditures and receipts: Evidence from new panel stationarity tests with breaks and factors

Tourism expenditures and receipts are an important component of many countries' balance of payments. Indeed, the determination of whether shocks to tourism expenditures and receipts are permanent or transitory in nature is relevant to understanding the appropriate policy response. This study introduces new panel stationarity tests that simultaneously model structural breaks and a common factor structure. The results from several panel stationarity tests including the new tests reject the null hypothesis of stationarity for the panel of 63 countries. Based on tests of stationarity with a common factor structure without structural breaks at the individual country level, the null hypothesis of stationarity is rejected in 24 and 26 countries with respect to per capita international tourism expenditures and tourism receipts, respectively. The inclusion of the Fourier approximation for smooth structural breaks alongside the common factor structure increases the number of rejections of the null hypothesis of stationarity to 48 and 54 countries for per capita international tourism expenditures and receipts, respectively. Hence, shocks to either tourism expenditures or receipts will likely be permanent in nature requiring a policy response in order to return tourism expenditures and receipts to their original trend path. JEL Codes: Z32, C33.