Tourism and long-term growth - A Spanish perspective

This paper explores whether specializing in tourism guarantees long-term growth using an accounting model in an attempt to measure the contribution of different production factors and of productivity to economic development. The Balearics and the Canary Islands of Spain are used as cases providing evidence that the continuous orientation of the structures towards tourism activities has been the driving force in the transformation of the economics and societies in both regions, as this meant very significant growth in the level of income. However, the decreasing contribution over time of the output can result in lower long term growth in production.