01889cas a2200265 a 4500 AALejournalIMF005989 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781451873238 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Piotrowski, John. Tourism Specialization and Economic Development : Evidence from the UNESCO World Heritage List / John Piotrowski, Rabah Arezki, Reda Cherif. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2009. 1 online resource (24 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students The present paper investigates whether tourism specialization is a viable strategy for development. We estimate standard growth equations augmented with a variable measuring tourism specialization using instrumental variables techniques for a large cross-section of countries for the period 1980-2002. We introduce an instrument for tourism based on the UNESCO World Heritage List. We find that there is a positive relationship between the extent of tourism specialization and economic growth. An increase of one standard deviation in the share of tourism in exports leads to about 0.5 percentage point in additional annual growth, everything else being constant. Our result holds against a large array of robustness checks. Mode of access: Internet Arezki, Rabah. Cherif, Reda. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2009/176 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2009/176/001.2009.issue-176-en.xml IMF e-Library