The Nexus Between Economic Policy Uncertainty and Stock Returns of Tourism Companies: Evidence from Turkey

This article aims to analyze the nexus between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and stock returns of tourism companies for Turkey by using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) boundary test for data from 1997 to 2017. The analysis results illustrate that an increase in the global and European economic policy uncertainty index affects negatively to Borsa Istanbul (BIST) tourism index in Turkey in both the short and long run. In addition, global economic policy uncertainty has a greater impact on stock returns of tourism companies in the long run than European economic policy uncertainty. The causality test results support this statement and illustrate a unidirectional causality from global economic policy uncertainty to BIST Tourism Index (XTRZM). These findings proved that Turkey is not only for Europe but also a tourism center, globally. Analysis results implied that especially global economic policy uncertainty is a factor that should be taken into account to explain tourism stock returns. This article proposes that it will be useful to use the EPU index, especially global EPU, as a determinant of tourism stock returns. This result takes the existing theoretical infrastructure one step further than traditional tourism demand models.