The Relevance of the Tourism-Led Growth Hypothesis to Malaysia

Abstract

This paper explored whether the tourism-led growth (TLG) hypothesis is empirically relevant to Malaysia based upon both full sample and rolling sample analyses. Data from January 1995 to December 2010 have been utilised for the purpose. Instead of relying upon aggregated data of tourist arrivals, disaggregated data of arrivals from 12 major tourism markets are relied upon for more insightful and accurate findings. The empirical results suggest that there was cointegration between Malaysia's economic growth and tourist arrivals from these tourism markets. However, the results of the full sample Granger causality test indicate that only 2 out of 12 tourism markets contributed to economic growth in the short-run. The TLG hypothesis is only supported in the long run by tourist arrivals from 10 out of the 12 tourism markets. The rolling-based Granger causality test shows that it is also these 10 markets situated mostly in developed countries that could provide a stable support for the TLG hypothesis.