Does Political and Economic Freedom Matter for Inbound Tourism? A Cross-National Panel Data Estimation

The paper examines the impact of political and economic freedom on inbound tourism forover 110 countries during 1995-2012. Panel country fixed-effects techniques are utilized toexamine the relationship after controlling for other factors that contribute to inbound tourism.The results show that civil liberties and economic freedom (among several other freedommeasures) are positively and significantly associated with inbound tourism. Examination ofthe moderation effect reveals that civil liberties (economic freedom) tend to play a moreinfluential role on inbound tourism when the level of economic freedom (civil liberties) isrelatively low.