Which night lights data should we use in economics, and where?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gibson, John; Olivia, Susan; Boe-Gibson, Geua; Li, Chao
• 署名单位: University of Waikato
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102602
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: density; DMSP br; Inequality br; Night lights br; VIIRS br; Indonesia br

摘要

Popular DMSP night lights data are flawed by blurring, top-coding, and lack of calibration. Yet newer and better VIIRS data are rarely used in economics. We compare these two data sources for predicting GDP, especially at the second subnational level, for Indonesia, China and South Africa. The DMSP data are a poor proxy for GDP outside of cities. The gap in predictive performance between DMSP data and VIIRS data is especially apparent at lower levels of the spatial hierarchy, such as for counties, and for lower density areas. The city lights-GDP relationship is twice as noisy with DMSP data than with VIIRS data. Spatial inequality is considerably understated with DMSP data, especially for the urban sector and in higher density areas. A Pareto adjustment to correct for top-coding in DMSP data has a modest effect but still understates spatial inequality and misses key features of economic activity in big cities.