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Evaluating Africa’s comparative advantage in travel service exports

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Author Info

  • Johan Fourie

    () (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)

Abstract

This paper tests the hypothesis that African countries reveal a comparative advantage in travel service exports empirically. The UNCTAD 2007 Handbook of Statistics (2008) is used to calculate revealed comparative advantage for 186 countries over 10 tradable service sectors using three different measures of the Balassa index. The results indicate that many African countries reveal a strong comparative advantage in travel service exports. Particularly, a band of countries with a vertical axis from South Africa to Ethiopia and a band of countries with a horizontal axis in the Sahel reveal promising results. If African countries are to benefit from the growth in world service exports, researchers and policy makers should note the massive potential for African travel exports, especially in the smaller destinations. Policies – including regional initiatives – to promote sustained growth in travel service exports are therefore of critical importance.

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File URL: http://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2009/wp062009/wp-06-2009.pdf
File Function: First version, 2009
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 06/2009.

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Date of creation: 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers78

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Related research

Keywords: Tourism; international trade; revealed comparative advantage; sub-Saharan Africa;

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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. African tourism
    by Johan Fourie in Johan Fourie's Blog on 2012-04-14 10:39:50
  2. Explaining African tourism
    by Johan Fourie in Johan Fourie's Blog on 2012-04-14 10:39:50
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Cited by:
  1. Johan Fourie & Maria Santana-Gallego, 2011. "The Determinants of African Tourism," Working Papers 260, Economic Research Southern Africa.

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