Spatial Spillovers and Employment Dynamics in Local Tourist Systems in Italy (1991-2001)

摘要

Tourism has been an important main industry in the world economy for many decades. While its importance is recognized, the study of the reasons why some tourist destinations expand and grow faster than others as well as the main factors affecting these dynamics is underdeveloped. The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors affecting the long-period occupational dynamics of the Italian local tourist system, taking into consideration the existence of spatial spillovers. For instance, with other considerations being equal, tourist systems that are close to localities with a high growth rate in fact tend to be more developed. The opposite is true for localities with low-growth neighbouring systems. This paper therefore provides an interesting perspective on the development of tourism-dependent regions, in light of tourism being one of the most important economic sectors and yet the least explored within a regional development framework.