Resilience by design: how modelling choices shaped tourism’s COVID-19 impact analyses

Multisectoral economic modelling provided insights to policymakers during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the economy-wide impacts of changes in tourism and the design of policy responses. These models embed assumptions about how firms and households respond to adverse shocks, which are linked to the level of economic resilience they exhibit. This paper illustrates how Input–Output and Computable General Equilibrium models, incorporating different behavioural assumptions, can yield different estimates of static resilience, the economy's ability to maintain function when shocked. Using the example of Scotland in 2020 and simulating an Accommodation demand shock, we show that model specification can rule out responses that directly influence the degree of estimated resilience in an economy. By comparing simulation results with observed changes in value added of the Accommodation sector, we demonstrate that appropriately accounting for resilience mechanisms helps close the gap between simulated and observed data.