Testing tourism-led growth hypothesis in Laos?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the tourism-led growth hypothesis in Laos. Design/methodology/approach The authors test the tourism-led growth hypothesis using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration estimation (Pesaran et al., 2001) and Granger causality tests. Findings The results of this paper show that when tourism is forcing variable, there is no long-run relationship between tourism development and economic growth. The Granger causality test demonstrates that there is a uni-directional causality running from economic growth in tourism. Social implications The empirical results and policy recommendation may be useful for other small developing countries. Originality/value This study is the first study to investigate the relationship between tourism development and growth in Laos, using a relatively new econometric approach – ARDL bound testing.