KOLKATA: In what could be a new way to measure economic growth, economists at the Brown University in the US have come up with a framework for estimating a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by using satellite images of the area’s nighttime lights.
In their research paper, economists J Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N Weil say they don’t envision the lights density data as a replacement for official numbers, but when added to existing data from agencies like the World Bank, the lights density can provide a better indicator of how these economies really are performing.
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