Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space
J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, David N. Weil
American Economic Review · 2012 · Volume 102 · Issue 2
Abstract
We develop a statistical framework to use satellite data on night lights to augment official income growth measures. For countries with poor national income accounts, the optimal estimate of growth is a composite with roughly equal weights on conventionally measured growth and growth predicted from lights. Our estimates differ from official data by up to three percentage points annually. Using lights, empirical analyses of growth need no longer use countries as the unit of analysis; we can measure growth for sub- and supranational regions. We show, for example, that coastal areas in sub-Saharan Africa are growing slower than the hinterland. (JEL E01, E23, O11, 047, 057)
Keywords
Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth, Environmental Accounts, Macroeconomics: Production, Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development, Measurement of Economic Growth, Aggregate Productivity, Cross-Country Output Convergence, Comparative Studies of Countries
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