Resumen de Dynamic effects of subsidizing the tourism sector

Stefan F. Schubert, Juan Gabriel Brida

• This paper studies the short-run and long-run effects of a production subsidy to the tourism sector of a small open economy, which can also be thought of as a region within a country. The authors introduce a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model in which the tourism sector is considered to be labour-intensive and produces traded services. The other sector is capital-intensive and produces a non-traded good, which is also used for capital accumulation. Labour and capital can move freely between sectors. Economic decisions are made by forward-looking representative agents which optimize their intertemporal welfare by choosing consumption of both the nontraded good and tourism services, the sectoral allocation of labour and the rate of wealth accumulation. The authors discuss the shortrun, dynamic and long-run effects of a production subsidy to the tourism sector. In the short run, the introduction of a subsidy to tourism production leads to a boom in that sector. As time passes, the economy-wide capital stock is decumulated and production of tourism falls. In the long run, compared to the situation before the subsidy was implemented, tourism production remains on a higher level, whereas output of the non-traded good drops.