ESTIMATING ECONOMIC-IMPACTS FROM TOURISM

Economists have traditionally used input-output (IO) analysis to exami ne the impacts of tourism on the economy of a region. This paper intro duces a relatively new and alternative technique, computable general e quilibrium (CGE). The two approaches are compared and then used to ana lyze, as an illustration, the impacts on Hawaii's economy from a reduc tion in visitor expenditure. The study concludes that the results of t he IO model are similar in magnitude to those of the CGE model but gen erally higher and that sectors closely associated with tourism exhibit the largest effects. The ability to account for inter-sectoral resour ce flows is a major advantage of CGE models and explains differences i n IO and CGE results. Copyright (C) Elsevier Science Ltd.