2012 June | Development that Works

2012 June | Development that Works: "According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, travel and tourism sustains more jobs than financial services, communications, mining, automotive and chemicals manufacturing industries across every region of the world. In areas such as the Caribbean, tourism represents 41% of goods and services total exports. Its potential is promising to many: some consider that tourism is Kenya´s “unpolished diamond”.

So evaluating the impact of tourism projects seems important for some and probably critical for many developing countries. Nevertheless, there is a clear challenge in randomly assigning tourists to treatment and control groups (where would you go?).  Perhaps one way would be to conduct magical mystery tours.

A better – although not more fun – alternative is presented in a recent paper prepared for the IDB (Technical Guidelines for Evaluating the Impacts of Tourism Using Simulation Models) by Professor J. Edward Taylor of the University of California at Davis. Simulation models."

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