Creative Economy and Thailand’s Macroeconomic Contribution

Abstract

This paper aims quantifying contribution of creative economy on Thailand’s
overall economy by using combined dataset of the Input-Output Table and the
National Industrial Survey. Findings show that creative economy has been playing
a significant role in the Thai economy in various aspects. Not only creating its
value-added, creative economy generates high proportion to total employment
and profit earning. Contrary to our understanding, majority of creative industries are
however found in manufacturing sector rather than in service sector or agricultural
sector. This causes high value added to the economy. In spite of those facts, value
added from pure arts is still minimal because of limited demand in the country.
We also find weak forward- and backward-linkages of creative economy to other
economic sectors in Thailand. Moreover, most of the value added, though has a
high contribution to the economy, is concentrated as a value added from capital,
not from other factors.