I’ve always liked these cute pictures of the light of our cities from space. It hadn’t occurred to me but of course you can use them to measure economic growth. Quite accurately where you have reason to believe that the countries books are otherwise cooked. As explained in this paper with the cute title above. Gives a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘satellite accounts’.
This and the politician and media’s word clouds, are all the average joe need to know. I will attempt the pdf, looks kinda dry tho’.
Of course if this method gains ground we can expect North Korea to put up giant searchlights aimed at the satellites.
That is a great comment DD.
But fear not, they still won’t be able to keep them running, that would probably require more power than they presently actually produce.
The real risk would be China mandating all villages with less than 1m people to have extra-bright lights.
My vision is not what it once was.
Here a little clearer
China is already an outlier (when you look at regressions) in that official growth has been much greater than that suggested by the change in lighting….