How Does the Inflow of Tourism Affect the Agricultural Exports of India?

Abstract

The empirical relationship between tourism inflow and international trade has been explored during recent years, supporting the argument that international tourism inflow promotes international trade between countries. However, the impact of international tourism inflow on agricultural exports has been neglected within standard agricultural trade models such as agricultural exports function and gravity model. The main aim of the article is to provide theoretical and empirical evidence that international tourism inflow matters for agricultural trade. The study uses an agricultural export demand function and augmented gravity model to examine the impact of tourism inflow on agricultural exports of India from the top 10 importing countries for the period 2000–2019. The agricultural trade model is estimated using random effect and fixed-effect model. To overcome the problem of panel heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation, it uses the panel corrected standard error model. Further, potential endogeneity is treated by using a 2SLS model. The empirical evidence confirms the significant and positive impact of tourism inflow on agricultural exports of India. JEL Codes: F1, Q17, Z30