Tourism Revenue And Economic Growth In Uzbekistan: An Empirical Ols And Var Analysis (2010–2023)

This study investigates the relationship between tourism revenue and economic growth in Uzbekistan over the period 2010–2023 using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) multiple regression and a bivariate Vector Autoregression (VAR) model. The OLS model incorporates tourism receipts, the hotels and restaurants sector share of GDP, CPI inflation, and a COVID-19 structural-break dummy as explanatory variables. The estimated model demonstrates strong explanatory power and satisfactory predictive accuracy, with the COVID-19 shock identified as the dominant structural disruption of the sample period. CPI inflation exerts a significant negative effect on growth, while tourism sector expansion shows a positive contribution. The VAR analysis reveals a statistically significant unidirectional Granger causal relationship running from tourism revenue to GDP growth, but not in the reverse direction, suggesting that the tourism-led growth hypothesis holds for Uzbekistan at the macroeconomic level. The findings offer evidence-based policy guidance for the ongoing development of Uzbekistan’s tourism sector within the New Uzbekistan 2030 agenda.