Rethinking tourism in macroeconomics

The contemporary crisis is giving evidence of failures of macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic policies. If the State is a key-role in macroeconomics, the contemporary crisis has shown the ‘State Weakness’ and any attempt in order to downgrade its role, when concentrated on deleveraging and spending review. Monetary policies seem to fail too and their targets should be changed. What if primary tools and estimates like GDP are not more able to estimate growth and welfare? In this paper we discuss the hypothesis that GDP can still be a reliable estimate of growth. Nevertheless only if GDP is connected exports that are leading many countries out of the crisis, when public spending is collapsing and monetary policies do not solve the contemporary credit crunch. Exports are important, with particular attention to any component that is related to exports. International Tourism Receipts must be included. According to the World Bank database and thanks to a cluster analysis of International Tourism Receipts and GDP growth from 2007 to 2011, positive variations of GDPs are perfectly matching with positive variations of tourism receipts. The cluster analysis emphasizes differences among ‘regions’ or continents. Europe and USA are relatively worse than Emerging Economies and this performance can be related to an increase of trade in emerging economies more than in mature ones.