The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented slowdown of economic activity worldwide, with an especially negative impact on the tourism sector. The adoption of international travel restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak has brought much of the global tourism industry to a virtual standstill. Governments have introduced a range of economic stimulus packages designed to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic, including its impact on travel and tourism. This article investigates whether the size of the tourism sector influences the economic policy response to COVID-19 pandemic using data from 136 countries. The findings show that the larger the tourism sector, the larger the economic stimulus package introduced by governments globally. Furthermore, we find that the size of the tourism sector is positively associated with both fiscal and monetary policy responses to the pandemic. The findings suggest that countries with larger tourism sectors adopted more aggressive economic stimulus packages to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and reinvigorate floundering economies.

This article investigates the effect of different economic and financial crises, such as inflation crisis, stock market crash, debt crisis, and banking crisis on international tourism flows using a panel gravity data set of 200 countries over the period 1995 to 2010. The results show that the inflation crisis has a dampening effect on international tourism flows in both the host and origin countries. The results also show that domestic debt crisis encourages international tourism arrivals in the host countries, whereas its impact on international tourism services in originating countries is negative. Further, the impact of these crises on tourism is region dependent. In particular, banking crisis depresses international tourism flows in host countries situated in regions such as America and Latin America and Caribbean, whereas its impact on originating countries located in regions such as Asia and the Middle East is insignificant.

This study aims to revisit the evidence of co-movement and lead-lag nexus between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in G7 countries over a period of two centuries by using the wavelet coherence analysis. The key findings reveal (i) a cyclical relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and GDP per capita, which implies that during the upswing phase of business cycles, economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions both grow, but the latter can be predicted using GDP as an indicator function at the 1- to 2-year scale. (ii) A time-scale bidirectional causality between carbon dioxide emissions and GDP per capita. This implies that carbon dioxide emissions cannot be reduced without adversely affecting economic growth. Further, the finding also implies a rapid adoption of alternative clean energy sources to reduce carbon dioxide emissions without depressing economic growth.