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This report summarises the project "The sectoral economic impacts of COVID-19 on the tourism economy: a regional analysis focused on Scotland", funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The project was undertaken by a research team comprising of researchers from the Fraser of Allander Institute and Department of Economics at the University of Strathclyde. The project adopted an economic modelling approach which used a (pre-pandemic) baseline of spending by different categories of tourists in Scotland and measures of changes in tourism demand in Scotland in 2021 and 2022. These were then used as inputs to an economic model which was used to estimate the consequences of COVID-19 for the tourism industry, as well as the propagation of impacts across the wider Scottish economy. Results were presented to key stakeholder groups during the duration of the project and sought to contribute the evidence base for decisions around policy choices during COVID-19 and in the recovery of the tourism sector post-COVID-19. Main findings from the project are discussed in an academic paper and six blog posts summarised at the end of this report. In this final report we summarise the projects activities, including: The construction of a baseline of pre-pandemic tourism spending identifying categories of tourism spending, months of the year and at a sub-national level for Scotland; The development of a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of Scotland which we were able to use to explore the impacts of COVID-related changes in tourism activities; Our simulation approach to modelling the impacts of COVID-19; Results from our analysis across different scenarios for 2021 and 2022. Through the project we have identified some areas where it could be possible to significantly improve our understanding of the economic contribution of tourism in Scotland in particular and to regional economies in general. We summarise these in this report under two headings: first, our reflections on the value of economic modelling for tourism analysis and, second, some areas where the data that is used to understand the tourism industry and its wider impacts on the economy could be improved.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented disruption for the tourism industry. The economic consequences of changes in tourism spending will propagate through the whole economy, however the scale of these system-wide consequences can be hard to quantify. In this paper, we calculate the direct reductions in spending across different tourism categories including domestic, and international tourism and then use a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to quantify their economic impacts. The results – illustrated using a model for Scotland and focusing on 2021 - demonstrate the scale of the losses in the tourism industry and the economy as a whole and the challenge for economic and tourism policy to mitigate the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in the future.

With increased devolution of powers, the UK’s departure from the EU and Covid-19 having different impacts on different areas of the UK, timely regional economic statistics are needed to support regional and national policymaking. This paper develops a strategic framework for the production of supply and use tables (SUTs) and input output tables (IOTs) for the four nations of the UK. Our proposed framework is supported by three pieces of analysis. First, we undertake a comprehensive review of different methods for constructing regional SUTs and IOTs and current international practise. Second, we discuss how the Scottish, Northern Irish and UK SUTs and IOTs are produced and the challenges faced in their construction. Third, we compare the existing Scottish IOT, produced using hybrid methods, with the Scottish IOT we obtain through top-down regionalisation of the UK IOT using location quotients. We conclude our paper by outlining nine key recommendations.

The UK government’s levelling up agenda has triggered renewed interest in regional disparities. However, for several years, there has been a growing consensus across the UK that better subnational statistics are required to support policymaking and analysis. This paper assesses the challenges and opportunities associated with building a suite of subnational socioeconomic indicators. Such a suite would facilitate the creation of profiles of local areas across the UK’s four nations. By reviewing current international practise, the UK policy and geographical landscape and the vast array of indicators which could be included in a suite, we provide six sets of recommendations. Specifically, we address: which indicators should be included; the timeliness and geographical granularity required; the extent to which indicators should be comparable across the four nations; how measurement, comparability issues and data gaps can be minimised; and how such data should be disseminated.

Around 1 in 4 children in Scotland live in relative poverty. This means they live in a household with an income 60% below the UK median income after housing costs have been deducted. Child poverty can have serious and lifelong impacts across a range of outcomes, and the Scottish Government have stated their aim to reduce significantly the incidence of child poverty. The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 includes a target to reduce relative child poverty to 10% by 2030/31. The baseline child poverty level is estimated to be 25% in 2020 compared to 24% in the most recent period (2017- 20). Meeting the target would represent an unprecedented reduction in child poverty to levels not seen in Scotland certainly since the early 1990s when the current statistical series began. Our latest report looks at some of the large, national level, devolved policy levers that the Scottish Government could use to meet the targets. We have focussed on childcare, employability programmes and social security. These are not the only options that the Scottish Government could take forward but are examples of structural policies that are capable of having a significant impact on household incomes and are Scotland wide in their reach.

Building on previous work this paper provides updated prices and inflation estimates for the twelve NUTS-1 regions of the UK. One key issue previously noted when moving to regional prices estimates is the reduction in LCFS sample size leading to unstable weights. In this paper, we investigate the data sources to produce regional expenditure estimates, attempting to increase the accuracy of CPIH estimates. The primary focus is on the Regional Household Final Consumption Expenditure measure (HFCE) publication for use as estimates for regional expenditure weights. While we were able to update the UK regional CPIH estimates to 2020 using other data sources we still encounter similar problems to Dawber and Smith (2017), with the small sample size of the price databases being problematic for the calculation of CPIH indices.