Tourism in the theory of international trade and payments

Abstract

In the theory of international trade tourism was never mentioned explicitly. When the first theories have been developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century tourism has not been of any importance, so the theory of the international real exchange of goods and services became a theory of international trade. The difference between trade and tourism is the fact, that the tourist travels to another country and consumes different goods and services there, whereas trade brings goods of the foreign country to the consumer. Therefore, the explanations of the different causes for international transactions have different weights for the explanation of tourism and of trade. The theory of international payments, however, when it was applied to the real world, very soon took notice of the rising part of tourism payments in the balance of payments. Today, one can roughly guess an average part of tourism in the total exchange of goods and services of nearly 10%, and much more in some tourism countries, like Spain or Austria. Recently, the US move to include services in the GATT has given rise to studies of services in the international economy. But the differences in services — ranging from communication, interest payments, consultant fees, transport to tourism — are so great that no uniform model valid for all services can be set up.

Citation

Socher, K. (1986), "Tourism in the theory of international trade and payments", The Tourist Review, Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 24-26. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb057953