Satellite data strongly suggests that China, Russia and other authoritarian countries a... - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...-are-fudging-their-gdp-reports
science research social authoritarian GDP growth misinformation economic
shared by Javier E on 15 May 18
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China, Russia and other authoritarian countries inflate their official GDP figures by anywhere from 15 to 30 percent in a given year, according to a new analysis of a quarter-century of satellite data.
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authoritarian regimes are especially likely to artificially boost their gross domestic product numbers in the years before elections, and that the differences in GDP reporting between authoritarian and non-authoritarian countries can't be explained by structural factors, such as urbanization, composition of the economy or access to electricity
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Martinez's findings are derived from a novel data source: satellite imagery that tracks changes in the level of nighttime lighting within and between countries over time
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provided by democracy are able to constrain governments’ desire to manipulate information or, more specifically, their desire to exaggerate how well the economy is doing,
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"The way I try to answer the question above is by comparing GDP (a self-reported indicator, prone to manipulation) and nighttime lights (recorded by satellites from outer space and much harder to manipulate) as measures of economic activity."
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"Consumption of nearly all goods in the evening requires lights," that paper explained. "As income rises, so does light usage per person, in both consumption activities and many investment activities."
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Martinez sorted the world's countries by their Freedom House score, which classifies countries on a spectrum ranging from "free" to "not free," based on categories such as civil rights protections and civil liberties. He then looked at how changes in nighttime lighting correlated with the countries' self-reported GDP measures.
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"I find that a 10 percent increase in nighttime lights is associated with a 2.4 percent increase in GDP in the most democratic countries and with a 2.9 percent to 3.4 percent increase in GDP in the most authoritarian ones," Martinez said. The most obvious explanation is that those countries are the most likely to fudge their GDP figures to make their political leaders look good.
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Beyond that, he found that authoritarian countries previously ruled by communist governments were particularly likely to report high GDP relative to nighttime lighting, as were authoritarian countries that were coming up on an election year.