Can tourism be a key sector in reducing income inequality? An empirical investigation for Turkey

ABSTRACT

The aim of the study is to investigate the nexus between tourism and income inequality by employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) test cover the period 1974–2015 in Turkey. Findings indicated that the variables are cointegrated and an increase in tourism has a positive effect on income inequality, while economic growth and trade openness have a negative effect both in the long-run and short-run. Results also denote that tourism will decrease income inequality with the expansion of tourism activities and the spread of tourism throughout society. In other words, the tourism-related Kuznets Curve hypothesis is valid for Turkey.

KEYWORDS:

• Income inequality
• tourism growth
• economic growth
• Kuznets curve
• Turkey
• ARDL test
• Bayer and Hanck cointegration
• Fourier ADF
• trade openness
• foreign direct investment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Umut Uzar http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3438-1422

Kemal Eyuboglu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2108-9732