Tourism multipliers for a small Caribbean island state: He case of Aruba

In this paper, we study the importance of tourism for Aruba, a small Caribbean island state within the Kingdom of The Netherlands. We present an input-output table based on the National Accounts and the Tourism Satellite Account for Aruba, with inbound tourism explicitly included, for the year 1999. Several types of multipliers are discussed. Each multiplier is relevant within a particular framework, but the choice between them is not always obvious. This paper tries to clarify a number of issues in their usage as they present themselves in the context of the study of tourism in Aruba.