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. 2011 May 24;108(21):8589-94.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1017031108. Epub 2011 May 16.

Using luminosity data as a proxy for economic statistics

Xi Chen  1 , William D Nordhaus
Affiliations

Using luminosity data as a proxy for economic statistics

Xi Chen et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

A pervasive issue in social and environmental research has been how to improve the quality of socioeconomic data in developing countries. Given the shortcomings of standard sources, the present study examines luminosity (measures of nighttime lights visible from space) as a proxy for standard measures of output (gross domestic product). We compare output and luminosity at the country level and at the 1° latitude × 1° longitude grid-cell level for the period 1992-2008. We find that luminosity has informational value for countries with low-quality statistical systems, particularly for those countries with no recent population or economic censuses.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Nighttime lights of North America. Nighttime stable lights for year 2006 in arc 30-s resolution are shown. The projected coordinate system of US contiguous Albers equal area conic projection is used and the image is generated with ArcGIS 9.3.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Gross cell product (GCP) and luminosity data, all cells. Shown are the scatter plot of log calibrated luminosity for 2006 and log of gross cell product for all 1° × 1° grid cells. Output density is gross cell product (PPP in billions in 2005 international dollars) per square kilometer. Luminosity density per square kilometer is the radiance calibrated luminosity for 2006. All grid cells (n = 12,393) are included. The solid line is the kernel estimator using an Epanechnikov kernel and 100 grid points per kernel.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Summary estimates of the value of θ or the weight on luminosity for countries of different grades. Shown is the estimated optimal weight (θ) for the both 17-y growth rate (TS) and cross-sectional data (XS) for countries. Blue and green bars indicate the values of θ for all countries, and red and purple bars indicate estimates for low-GDP density countries only. The sample size for the E countries is too small to be statistically reliable.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Summary estimates of the value of θ or the weight on luminosity for cells of different grades. See Fig. 3 for description. Note that the sample size for cells is generally large (Table 2). There are no observations for high-density E countries.
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