Abstract:
This study conceptualizes tourism-led grocery inflation as a cost-of-living externality affecting everyday goods. Using retailer-published price microdata for Croatia, it aggregates 1.3 billion daily observations into monthly datasets covering May-October 2025. Prices are already higher in tourism-intensive coastal municipalities in May and then show additional coastal price growth over the summer, tracing an inverted U-shaped pattern that peaks in July-August and moderates by October. The pattern persists for essential goods and identical barcode-matched products. Retailer responses are heterogeneous: some chains show stronger coastal price increases during the peak season, while others show little or no coastal-inland differential. The findings identify a resident-facing tourism externality and support local cost-of-living monitoring to inform place-sensitive policy.
