The Impacts of Tourism, Energy Consumption and Political Instability on Economic Growth in the D-8 Countries

This study uses data from the eight largest Islamic countries known as D-8 for the period 2000 to 2013 concerns to assess the effect of tourism، energy consumption and political instability on economic growth. To address the objective of this study، we utilize both the static panel data approach as well as the dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator to examine the impact of candidate variables. Our results show that energy consumption and tourism significantly contribute to the economic growth of countries in the D-8 region. Hence، our study lends some support to the existence of the tourism-led growth and energy-led growth hypotheses in the region. In line with our expectation، our estimation results also reveal that political instability impedes the process of economic growth and development in the D-8 countries. There fore، it should be take serious action in these countries to overcome political instability and attract international tourists to boost economic growth. Since energy consumption has the greatest impact on economic growth in member countries، policies that reduce energy consumption without planning to support the growth of the manufacturing sector in these countries، will have disturbing impact on economic growth.