The impact of climate change on tourism economies of Greece, Spain, and Turkey

As major tourism economies in the Southern Mediterranean, Greece, Spain, and Turkey are particularly vulnerable to climate change. With mounting evidence of climate change, we study if the negative impact of climate change on Greece, Spain, and Turkey is particularly large. Empirically, we use a unique data set that makes temperature measurement more meaningful, and adopt the model in Ng and Zhao (Ecological Economics 70:963–970, 2011) to estimate the economic impacts of climate change on different types of economies. Our main finding is that climate change’s adverse impact on Greece, Spain, and Turkey is larger than its impacts on other types of economies, suggesting that Greece, Spain, and Turkey should engage in strong international cooperation to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change.