A PANEL COINTEGRATION ANALYSIS: AN APPLICATION TO INTERNATIONAL TOURISM DEMAND OF THAILAND

This paper sought to find the long-run relationships between international tourist arrivals in Thailand and economic variables such as GDP, transportation cost and exchange rates during period of 1986 to 2007. Also this paper used five standard panel unit root tests such as LLC (2002) panel unit root test, Breitung (2000) panel unit root test, IPS (2003) panel unit root test, Maddala and Wu (1999) and Choi (2001) panel unit root test and Handri (1999) panel unit root test. Moreover, the panel cointegration test based on Pedroni residual cointegration tests, Kao residual cointegration tests and Johansen fisher panel cointegration test were used to test in panel among the variables. The OLS estimator, DOLS estimator and FMOLS estimator were used to find the long-run relationship of the international tourism demand model for Thailand.The long-run results indicated that growth in income (GDP) of Thai’s Asia major tourist source markets (Malaysia, Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan) have a positive impact on international tourists arrival to Thailand. In addition, the transportation cost of these countries has negative impact on the number of international tourist arrivals to Thailand. Finally Thailand’s currency has positive impact on the number of international tourist arrivals to Thailand. Most of findings from this study were consistent with economic theory and the implications of the model can be use for policy making.