Do tourism spillovers matter in regional economic analysis? An application to Portugal

This study estimates tourism’s effects on economic performance at the national and regional levels, accounting explicitly for the existence of regional spillovers. The results suggest that there are important regional spillover effects on output, employment, and investment, respectively, and regions benefit differently from tourism located in the region and tourism located elsewhere in the country. The geographical pattern that emerges from the results is that the direct effects are more important in the central regions, while spillovers are more important in the northern and southern regions, the latter being one of the most important touristic regions in the country.