Open AccessPosted Content
Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space
TLDR
A statistical framework is developed that uses satellite data on lights growth to augment existing income growth measures, under the assumption that measurement error in using observed light as an indicator of income is uncorrelated with measurementerror in national income accounts.Abstract:
GDP growth is often measured poorly for countries and rarely measured at all for cities or subnational regions. We propose a readily available proxy: satellite data on lights at night. We develop a statistical framework that uses lights growth to augment existing income growth measures, under the assumption that measurement error in using observed light as an indicator of income is uncorrelated with measurement error in national income accounts. For countries with good national income accounts data, information on growth of lights is of marginal value in estimating the true growth rate of income, while for countries with the worst national income accounts, the optimal estimate of true income growth is a composite with roughly equal weights. Among poor-data countries, our new estimate of average annual growth differs by as much as 3 percentage points from official data. Lights data also allow for measurement of income growth in sub- and supranational regions. As an application, we examine growth in Sub Saharan African regions over the last 17 years. We find that real incomes in non-coastal areas have grown faster by 1/3 of an annual percentage point than coastal areas; non-malarial areas have grown faster than malarial ones by 1/3 to 2/3 annual percent points; and primate city regions have grown no faster than hinterland areas. Such applications point toward a research program in which "empirical growth" need no longer be synonymous with "national income accounts."read more
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Remote sensing of night lights: A review and an outlook for the future
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors outline the historical development of night-time optical sensors up to the current state-of-the-art sensors, highlight various applications of night light data, discuss the special challenges associated with remote sensing of night lights with a focus on the limitations of current sensors, and provide an outlook for the future of remote sensing.
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Shadow Economies Around the World: What Did We Learn Over the Last 20 Years?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an extended discussion of the latest developments about the existing and new estimation methods of the shadow economy for 158 countries all over the world are presented over 1991 to 2015.
References
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Book
The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions, and International Trade
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