Journal
AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
Volume 102, Issue 2, Pages 994-1028Publisher
AMER ECONOMIC ASSOC
DOI: 10.1257/aer.102.2.994
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Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [R24 HD041020, T32 HD007338] Funding Source: Medline
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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)
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