Testing tourism-led economic growth and economic-driven tourism growth hypotheses: The case of Georgia

This paper empirically investigates a causal relationship between tourism and economic growth in Georgia for 1997-2018 period by employing ARDLBT approach to cointegration. Results reject economic-driven tourism growth hypothesis for Georgia and reveal that impact of tourism development over economic growth is negative in the long-run, in contrary positive in the short-run. Obtained results suggest that there is a possibility to have a tourism resource curse in the long-term in Georgia. Georgian government should build a tourism strategy to avoid crowding out of human capital from industrial production and decrease the share of imports for the needs of tourism sector