Analysis and review of the link between receipts and expenditures of the tourism sector with economic growth: new evidence of panel causality in The Middle East and North Africa

Tourism is known as an important source of international currency exchange that can provide funding for economic growth in the countries. Tourism revenues are an example of alternative exports, which can improve balance of payments, increase employment and finally economic growth. In this regard, this study reviews the causality relationship between the tourism receipts and expenditure with economic growth in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during 1995-2015 using the panel data approach. So, in this study a new approach to hypothesis of tourism leads to growth is proposed and the causal relationships between tourism and economic growth are classified in four hypotheses growth, conservation, feedback and impartiality. This new classification leads to explain the different causal relationship between tourism and economic growth for each country specially. The obtained results shows that despite of the relationship bilateral causality between tourism and economic growth (confirmation of feedback hypothesis) for a set of countries, for each of countries, the causality orientation between tourism and economic growth, depending on the country's situation and the tourism indicator used is different. Also it shows that, there is a positive relationship between tourism receipts and expenditures with economic growth in the countries under study