An explorative study of tourism time series: Evidence from Slovenia and Croatia

This paper investigates the long-term cointegration between tourism prices and domestic inflation in Croatia and Slovenia. Those two countries share a common economic history and statistical crispness in the 20th century, the time when Econometrics was not a blossoming topic. The two countries split the common economic path in the 1990s and since then, econometricians have been tackling different development issues and researches. The purpose of the paper is to stress the importance of using a well-designed time-series methodology when dealing with multiple variables estimation and evaluation as well in designing adequate and efficient quantitative models, capable to provide valuable forecasts and predict external shocks. It is assumed that, at the basis of an efficient quantitative model, there is a need of unit root and errors normal distribution testing. To test the covariance of cointegration between tourism prices and domestic inflation, the vector autoregressive model (VAR) model is used on 260 valid monthly time-series observations (~ 22 years). The results have shown that prices of short-stay accommodation in Slovenia are cointegrated with domestic inflation, whereas in Croatia there is no stable cointegration vector on prices of accommodation services if / when analysed using the intervention dummy variables and a constant. Although the results indicate that the research hypothesis is generally confirmed, better and more robust results could be obtained including mean-shift dummy variables in a VAR model.