# The Effect of Rainfall on Economic Growth in Thailand: A Blessing for Poor Provinces
## 2 Literature Review
[PERSON] and [PERSON] (2006) observed that rainfall deficiency had a greater magnitude of impact on the GDP compared to surplus rainfall in India. Yet [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2016) noted that crop income fell sharply due to rainfall extremes from either floods or droughts. They suggested that in Thailand, excessive rainfall resulted in income smoothing through asset transactions and off-farm employment changes, but the same was not found for drought events. Additionally, [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2016) conducted an in-depth study of seasonal rainfall and found that spring droughts and summer floods severely affected northeastern Brazil, a region that has long been the country's poorest region. Finally, [PERSON] et al. (2013) investigated precipitation extremes in terms of drought and flood indices across 133 countries. The drought index was found to be associated with a highly significant negative influence on GDP growth, and while the flood index was also associated with a negative influence on GDP growth, this relationship had a reduced magnitude. Moreover, flooding was found to negatively impact industrial sectors. These findings indicate that historical GDP growth has been affected by precipitation extremes, rather than by temperature as has been previously reported and suggested by many researchers ([PERSON], 2012; [PERSON] et al., 2015; [PERSON] et al., 2012; [PERSON] and [PERSON], 2019; [PERSON], 2014; [PERSON] et al., 2018; [PERSON], 2013). Finally, few in-depth studies have addressed how rainfall influences the economic sector. [PERSON] (2012) studied Asian countries and found that while economic growth was negatively affected by population growth, it was positively affected by precipitation. Furthermore, he determined that rainfall had a significant positive impact on the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, but it had no influence on the service sector. [PERSON] et al. (2012) examined how natural disasters affected economic sector growth, concluding that disasters had the potential to affect economic growth, but this effect was not always negative. For example, moderate flooding could generate positive economic growth in the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors. Flooding could also positively affect the agricultural sector since floods were often localised and concentrated in small areas, thus meaning that floodwater could be used as a plentiful annual water supply for irrigation which would improve agricultural productivity. Moreover, whenever nations used hydroelectricity or other forms of energy production that utilised water as a secondary input, rainfall would have an influence on the energy sector and floods could improve industrial output ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2017). Additionally, the service sector is promoted by flooding because this area of the economy has strong links with both agriculture and industry, particularly in developing countries. Lastly, [PERSON] (2010) found that rainfall deviation influenced agriculture more than urban growth. The existing literature has largely considered the relationship between rainfall and economic growth from a macroscale using national data from many different countries. There is a generally positive relationship between rainfall and economic growth meaning that higher rainfall mostly stimulates economic growth, whereas reduction in the amount of rainfall has an adverse impact on economic growth. Consequently, rainfall variability can both improve and affect economic growth, particularly in poor and arid countries reliant on agriculture. Furthermore, while a few previous studieshave examined the effect of rainfall on economic growth at the sector level (agricultural, industrial, and service), they have ignored the subsector levels. Therefore, the present study was conducted to present an in-depth examination of how both the economic sector and the related subsector levels were affected and influenced by precipitation.