Economic Rise and Decline - As Seen from Space

Economic change is hard to measure and thus hard to diagnose. One indicator of economic activity, light emissions, is observed nightly by satellites, giving a potential proxy for local economic growth in every country. Changes in night light correlate with economic changes at the national level but it is unknown if they also proxy for local economic changes. The proposed research uses gold standard data on the growth of electrified human settlements to evaluate the accuracy of night-light based measures of local economic change. Growth proxies will then be used to test hypotheses about causes and consequences of economic change.