TOURISM AND REGIONAL GROWTH IN VISEGRAD COUNTRIES

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of domestic and international tourism on the economic growth process in the Visegrad countries Czech republic, Slovak republic, Poland and Hungary. The aim of paper is to analyse the influence of domestic and international tourism on the economic growth rate over the period 2002-2012. The territorial breakdown is based on Eurostat's NUTS classification, and we consider the NUTS2 level, which defines regions as the basic territory al unit for the application of regional policies. The econometric analysis is based on the panel regression model, where we specify the regional rate of per capita GDP growth as a function of tourism flows, as well as the standard right-hand side growth model variables. Besides controlling for initial conditions, we also include a wide set of covariates to account for the endowment of human and technological capital and for the geographical, social and institutional features of the regions. The results demonstrate that regional growth is positively affected by domestic and international tourism flows on regional growth.