Photo: NASA-The Washington Post
SFGate/Washington Post: Satellite data strongly suggests that China, Russia and other authoritarian countries are fudging their GDP reports
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.
The working paper, by Luis R. Martinez of the University of Chicago, also found that 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.
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.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The idea of using satellites to assess GDP numbers has been around for a long time. In regards to China and Russia .... I have always distrusted their official numbers. But Russia has been cleaning up its GDP reporting in the past few years .... but China .... let us just say that China is complicated.
