"THE VIEW FROM ABOVE

In recently published research, I examined whether autocracies are more prone to overstating economic growth than democracies by analyzing both official GDP figures and the spread of night-time lights as recorded by satellites. Scholars have begun to use such lights as a proxy for economic activity. An economic expansion leads to an increase in private and public infrastructure (more houses, more factories, more roads) and higher electricity consumption. All of these factors produce more lights in the night, which the U..S. Air Force’s defense meteorological satellite program can measure at a highly granular level in publicly available data sets. This form of data has several key advantages for the study of economic activity: it covers much of the globe, it allows for easy comparison across locations and over time, and it can be aggregated to different units of observation, such as villages, provinces, and entire countries. Most important, unlike official statistics regarding GDP growth, night-time lights cannot be manipulated.

I parsed the available data on night-time lights in 184 countries between 1992 and 2013, comparing changes in the relative brightness of a country with its reported GDP data. Autocracies reported higher GDP growth figures than democracies did for the same amount of growth in night-time lights, overstating yearly GDP growth by a factor of 1.35 relative to democracies. (This means that when the true growth rate is 1.0 percent, the authoritarian government reports 1.35 percent, or when the true growth rate is 10 percent, it reports 13.5 percent.)"

On Wednesday, May 10, 2023 at 11:22:55 AM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> "THE VIEW FROM ABOVE
>
> In recently published research, I examined whether autocracies are more prone to overstating economic growth than democracies by analyzing both official GDP figures and the spread of night-time lights as recorded by satellites. Scholars have begun to use such lights as a proxy for economic activity. An economic expansion leads to an increase in private and public infrastructure (more houses, more factories, more roads) and higher electricity consumption. All of these factors produce more lights in the night, which the U.S. Air Force’s defense meteorological satellite program can measure at a highly granular level in publicly available data sets. This form of data has several key advantages for the study of economic activity: it covers much of the globe, it allows for easy comparison across locations and over time, and it can be aggregated to different units of observation, such as villages, provinces, and entire countries. Most important, unlike official statistics regarding GDP growth, night-time lights cannot be manipulated.
>
> I parsed the available data on night-time lights in 184 countries between 1992 and 2013, comparing changes in the relative brightness of a country with its reported GDP data. Autocracies reported higher GDP growth figures than democracies did for the same amount of growth in night-time lights, overstating yearly GDP growth by a factor of 1.35 relative to democracies. (This means that when the true growth rate is 1.0 percent, the authoritarian government reports 1.35 percent, or when the true growth rate is 10 percent, it reports 13.5 percent.)"

"Streetlight effect - Wikipedia
A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost.
He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman
asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park."