Panel data for the 15 Chilean regions with Weather and GDP variables

We build annual region-industry level GDP series for Chile over the period 1985-2017 from the National Accounts data publicly available from the Central Bank of Chile. There are 12 industries and 15 regions (regional denomination of 2007). For the years 1985-2007, we created a 15 region and 12 industry panel series assuming that each of the divided regions I and X shares of industry-level GDP is constant between 1985-2008. We create series of both nominal and real GDP where the real GDP is adjusted using the UF or the value of real monetary unit which is indexed to the CPI.

The 12 industries include: 1. Agriculture and Forestry, 2. Fishing, 3. Mining, 4. Manufacturing, 5. Electricity, Gas, and Water (EGA), 6. Construction, 7. Commerce, Restaurants, and Hotels, 8. Transport and Communications, 9. Financial Services, 10. Home Ownership and property, 11. Personal Services, 12. Public Administration.

We also obtain weather data available from the University of Delaware Air Temperature and Precipitation dataset that provides gridded mean monthly surface air temperature (in Celsius degrees) and total monthly precipitation (in centimeters per month) data from 1900-2017. The data covers the terrestrial area of the globe with a grid size of 0.5 degree latitude x 0.5 degree longitude, which is approximately 56km x 56km at the equator. The grid squares intersect the area of Chile. We use geospatial software (QGIS) to aggregate the weather data to the regional level. First, we determine the fraction of each grid that falls within the borders of each region. Then, for each region, we create the regional weather series as a weighted average of the weather series of each grid where the weight is equal to the share of the grid that intersects the region. In this way, a grid square that has ½ of its area intersecting a region receives ½ the weight of a grid square that completely intersects the region.