# The Effect of Rainfall on Economic Growth in Thailand: A Blessing for Poor Provinces
## 2 Literature Review  
Recent studies have sought to explore how rainfall impacts economic growth, although this is a rather new perspective. Most of the existing literature has focused on the impact of climate change on economic growth by considering temperature and rainfall as climatic variables. Moreover, mostly discussions of the topic have focussed on the expected increase in average global temperatures. For example, [PERSON] et al. (2009) and [PERSON] (2009) suggested that higher temperatures would reduce income, particularly in lesser developed countries ([PERSON] et al., 2012). A few previous studies focussed only on rainfall as a climatic variable ([PERSON], 2012; [PERSON] et al., 2010; [PERSON], 2014; [PERSON] et al., 2018; [PERSON], 2010; [PERSON] and [PERSON], 2011; [PERSON], 2007; [PERSON] and [PERSON], 2016). However, climate change affects precipitation patterns ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2018); thus, climate change may impact economic growth as a result of the variability of rainfall ([PERSON], 2012). Therefore, rainfall can be represented as a climate variable to study the aspect of climate change. Furthermore, this was consistent with [PERSON] et al. (2013), who found that extreme rainfall was the key variable of climate while temperature was found to have little significance on economic growth. Hence, the present study focussed on the rainfall variable in order to contribute new evidence about a tropical country like Thailand. The core assumption was that rainfall affected economic growth, which was consistent with [PERSON] et al. (2013). An alternative assumption stated that rainfall may affect economic sectors differently. These two assumptions formed the basic perspective of this study. Rainfall can both positively and negatively affect economic growth; in addition, most previous studies have focussed on countries with rainfed agriculture at the national level. In particular, African countries, which depend mainly on the agriculture sector, were found to have rainfall positively affecting economic growth. [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2011) estimated the relationship between rainfall, economic growth, and civil unrest and conflict in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Their results showed that rainfall levels and rainfall growth had a positive impact on the GDP per capita growth. They also addressed political as well as economic issues finding that adverse economic shocks resulted in civic violence. Additionally, [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2015) examined the impact of rainfall variability on economic growth in African countries and found that a 1% increase in rainfall resulted in a 6.6% increase in economic growth. [PERSON] (2014) also determined that the aggregated effects of rainfall positively influenced economic growth in Africa. Moreover, [PERSON] et al. (2018) confirmed the positive effect of higher precipitation in poor countries with either hot or temperate climates. Finally, [PERSON] (2018) showed that rainfall had a positive impact on cassava yields in Thailand. Secondly, a lack of rainfall has been shown to be economically detrimental. For instance, [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2015) showed that droughts can cause substantial negative long-term growth in both rich and poor countries. Similarly, [PERSON] et al. (2012) concluded that the lack of precipitation negatively affected economic growth in poor countries. Furthermore, [PERSON] (2007) provided evidence suggesting that erratic and unpredictable rainfall as well as gross governmental mismanagement created economic difficulties in Zimbabwe. [PERSON] (2012) also investigated the effects of rainfall on Ethiopia's highly rainfed-dependent economy demonstrating that the extent of the adverse impact of rainfall variability on economic growth largely depended upon the rate of expansion of the amplitude of rainfall variability and the frequency of extreme events. Likewise, several studies have compared the impact of rainfall surplus and deficiency on economic growth, particularly in relation to the agricultural sector.