“Persistence, long memory and seasonality in Kenyan tourism series” a WP by Luis A. Gil-Alaña, Resident Fellow of the NCID, will be published in the forthcoming issue of the Annals of Tourism Research, the most important journal in the field. Robert Mudida, Non-Resident Fellow of the NCID and Fernando Pérez de Gracia, professor of Economics at the University of Navarra are the coauthors of this article that analyses the Kenyan tourism sector.

“In the paper we use some new econometric techniques which are very convenient to analyze which are the effects of the shocks in time series. It is well known that the tourism sector in Kenya is very sensitive to shocks, for instance, tourism declined sharply during the post-election violence that took place in 1992 and 2008,” explain Luis A. Gil-Alaña.

The main result of the investigation reveals that the shocks in this sector are transitory and they disappear after a short period of time. This result is contrary to what was supposed that shocks could have a permanent effect on the future evolution of the series.

The idea of looking at this particular sector came up when Luis A. Gil-Alaña went to Nairobi for the first time two years ago. He traveled with Guglielmo Maria Caporale a Non-Resident Fellow of the NCID to meet Robert Mudida from the Strathmore University and Terry Ryan from the Central Bank. “Terry Ryan suggested us to study the tourism sector in the country since it was quite important and professionals from the Kenyan Statistical Office told us that they had very good data of this particular sector,” said Luis A. Gil-Alaña.

The tourism sector has very important role in some developing countries such as Kenya. It contributes to the economic growth of the country and the Gross Domestic Product. “It is to date the most important export service for the Kenyan economy and one of the most vibrant tourism sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa,” concluded Luis A. Gil-Alaña.