Stat Methods Appl (2011) 20:519–542 DOI 10.1007/s10260-011-0175-y Cultural tourism and temporary art exhibitions in Italy: a panel data analysis F. Marta L. Di Lascio · Simone Giannerini · Antonello E. Scorcu · Guido Candela Accepted: 12 September 2011 / Published online: 16 October 2011 © Springer-Verlag 2011 Abstract The main aim of this work is to study the relationship between cultural tourism and temporary art exhibitions by means of a panel data analysis. In literature, the capability of cultural attractions, e.g. art exhibitions, of increasing the tourist flow has not been investigated yet and we start to fill this gap. Our data set consists of monthly observed variables on 52 Italian provinces over the period 2003–2007. Our response variable is the amount of hotel arrivals and the set of covariates includes the amount of visitors of temporary exhibitions of ancient, modern and contemporary art plus a set of variables that contribute to tourist arrivals, like the kind of destination, the attraction capability of each province and so on. Of particular interest is to discover the art sector that has the strongest influence on the tourist flow towards Italy by keeping into account both the temporal dynamic and the heterogeneity of the Italian provinces. To this aim, we discuss the static and dynamic error component regression models from both the theoretical and practical point of view. The estimated two-way fixed F. M. L. Di Lascio · S. Giannerini (B ) Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Bologna, Via Belle Arti 41, 40126 Bologna, Italy e-mail: simone.giannerini@unibo.it F. M. L. Di Lascio e-mail: francesca.dilascio@unibo.it A. E. Scorcu Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Strada Maggiore 45, 40125 Bologna, Italy e-mail: antonello.scorcu@unibo.it G. Candela Department of Economics, University of Bologna, P.zza Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy e-mail: guido.candela@unibo.it 123