TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dupont,Brandon
AU  - Gandhi,Alka
AU  - Weiss,Thomas
TI  - Fluctuations in Overseas Travel by Americans, 1820 to 2000
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14847
PY  - 2009
Y2  - April 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14847
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14847.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Brandon Dupont
Department of Economics
Western Washington University
Parks Hall 206B
516 High Street
Bellingham, WA 98225
E-Mail: brandon.dupont@wwu.edu

Alka Gandhi
Department of Economics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
Tel: 570-321-4154
E-Mail: Gandhi@econ.umd.edu

Thomas J. Weiss
Department of Economics
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS  66045
Tel: 785/840-6878
Fax:  785/864-5270
E-Mail: t-weiss@ku.edu
AB  - There were substantial fluctuations in the numbers of American overseas travelers, especially before World War II. These fluctuations in travel around the robust, long term upward trend are the focus of this paper. We first identify those fluctuations in the raw data and then try to explain the pattern of overseas travel in a quantitative way. As we show, despite the impact of a myriad of episodic events, the fluctuations in travel can be explained to a large extent by changes in the direct price of travel, changes in per capita GDP in the U.S., the extent of travel in the preceding year, and by periods of armed conflict in Europe. We attempt to explain some of the remaining variation for specific episodes in which the actual level of travel differed substantially from the predicted.
ER  -