
Satellite data suggests China and other authoritarian regimes are fudging GDP - samspenc
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/15/satellite-data-strongly-suggests-that-china-russia-and-other-authoritarian-countries-are-fudging-their-gdp-reports/
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cppqt_pingpong
First author coreleates night light with GDP growth, shows example of India.
They he questions countries like China, North Korea and Russia. He shows the
satellite image of North Korea.

Where is equivalent data for China and Russia ?

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mkstowegnv
The amount of street lighting is a complex function (varying a great deal in
space and time) of local budgets, changes to CFL/ led/ other technologies, and
political desires on the one hand for the perception of fighting crime, and on
the one hand much more rarely for less light pollution. I do not see that they
controlled for any of this (and can't imagine how they could have). Possibly
some of the cited papers that I did not look at might have tried to address
this.

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cirgue
I would suggest an alternate interpretation: China (and maybe Russia as well)
don’t actually know what their GDP is either.

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rando444
While beginning reading I was ready to dismiss this as a correlation/causation
sort of thing.. but found myself pleasantly intrigued with the analysis.

