A study of lights at night suggests dictators lie about economic growth (2022)
economist.com
economist.com
I spent a lot of time living in China. Nobody believes the government figures. But I'm also skeptical that using artificial light as a proxy for economic growth is rational, particularly when you realise that Chinese people overwhelmingly live in vertical high density buildings and the amount of light used when moving from last-gen 'heavy industry' to next-gen 'value add'/'light industry'/'design work'/whatever is going to be reduced.
Therefore although I am a big fan of the Economist and like the idea, I think the premise of this particular study may be somewhat flawed.
Where the article states "the mismatch between satellite and GDP data did not appear in dictatorships until they were too rich to receive some types of aid" I think what they may be discovering is "when people move in to dense modern housing and shift to white collar work the model breaks down". There are other factors too: more modern lighting is more efficient, people increasingly socialize through phones, and outdoor living spaces are reduced in relatively inhospitable climates, somewhat limiting light pollution.
Thinking back to first principles, the majority of outdoor light pollution is probably from freeways and city centers, and if you proxy that with economic growth it's probably significant as a pre-emption at a certain phase of transition from agricultural/low-development-level economy through highly developed economy, but becomes irrelevant rapidly once those development prerequisites have been achieved.
It doesn't help that this guy is trying to sell a book.
I found myself wondering if it was a lagging indicator. Hopefully the peer review process would have flagged these issues if they were serious. I didn't see the venue mentioned though.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/720458?utm_sou...
Not to mention the automation of heavy industry leading to "dark factories": some Chinese factories are so completely automated now that they don't bother turning on the lights in large chunks of them. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCBdcNA_FsI
Similarly, gains in energy efficiency, such as widespread LED adoption, are global and not limited to any regime type. The same applies to economic transitions from heavy industry to services and behavioral shifts toward indoor or screen-based activity; these are common across modern economies. However, the study finds that the light/GDP mismatch emerges selectively in authoritarian regimes once they pass the income threshold for certain types of foreign aid.
This pattern suggests that the divergence is not driven by modernization effects alone, but rather by systematic incentives to inflate economic data.
I agree with your skepticism of the method and it's good to explicitly list these things. But I think the authors of the research would also probably also agree that the method is far from perfect.
> when people move in to dense modern housing and shift to white collar work the model breaks down....more modern lighting is more efficient
These should apply equally to dictatorships and democracies right? Or at least it shouldn't correlate with the dishonesty of the regime so the model can factor it out.
> people increasingly socialize through phones
You still need light for most forms of economic development. I've been to a few places where it's almost completely dark at night and people communicate on phones. But the economic centers, for example where people congregate for night life, have lights on.
(1980 is an arbitrary date, but before the fall of the USSR and thus the explosive growth of the Eastern Europe, and when shots from orbit likely became easy to obtain.)
And once you're in other big cities, this becomes even more true. It's common to see single floor businesses and buildings right in the busiest parts of town.
it's interesting you pick on this detail. I'm of a mind that "not free" govts control information so carefully and lie about their statistics so thoroughly that we can use that discrepancy to establish proper weights for our measured lighting scale.
To me that seems like a really alien solution. What about closing the curtains?
If you don't want the lights, why not just turn them off?
It's really common in many cities in France too, also in the countryside to reduce disruption for bats in particular.
When it comes to driving, I would definitely prefer they keep the street lights on, for the increased visibility/safety.
It seems self-evident that simply turning off street lights in the vast majority of cities will not cause them to become world-leading bastions of calm and safety.
By what measure?
Right, so you're saying the country itself is within the top 5 by GDP not that the city within your country is a top 5 city (regardless of country).
I’m curious if the lights are off completely, or are they dimmed and/or motion activated. Also curious about how it affects the costs (and is there a financial motivation as well).
For the UK, important streetlight (motorways, junctions, etc) are kept on. But the quieter streets and away from junctions are shut off.
It’s done for “climate” reasons but I’m pretty use the root cause is actually just another cost cutting measure.
But regardless, energy savings was also one of the cited reasons. So to answer your question: both.
It’s not really any difference to other traditional climate concerns like wind nor rain aside from light being a non-tactile property. But then neither is heat.
I will concede that my interpretation of the term “climate” here might not be correct. I’m not an expert in this field so it’s entirely possible I’ve stretched the definition
My county isn’t listed there so there plenty more councils which also do this and arent mentioned.
“Many” is subjective though. So your experience could be valid and my statement still true.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-commissioner-of-lab...
USA (2013-2023 CAGR: 2.3%) 2014: 6.2% 2015: -5.3% 2016: -1.8% 2017: 15.2% 2018: -4.9% 2019: 4.5% 2020: -5.4% 2021: 6.7% 2022: 14.5% 2023: -3.6%
China (2013-2023 CAGR 7.9%) 2014: -1.7% 2015: -1.2% 2016: -5.1% 2017: 53.3% 2018: -1.0% 2019: 7.5% 2020: 6.5% 2021: 11.4% 2022: 4.2% 2023: 10.8%
There would be so much alpha in knowing stuff like the true employment rate that private agencies will be extremely well-funded to collect this data (in fact this probably already happens for some data, there might be alpha in having a second opinion even if you think the government data is trustworthy).
I think the worst-case outcome would be that the mass populace doesn't have access to the info because it's paywalled. But to the extent that journalism continues to exist, journalists will know the employment rate, GDP, that kinda stuff.
Even then I would guess there would be a lot of other leading signals than lighting that would also correlate.
1. collecting jobs data is a fuzzy thing and guesses are made
2. reporting jobs data is subject to political influence
The size of the negative surprise this time is worrying raising the distinct possibility that the part of the model which is extrapolating from the past is insufficient and reality shifted a lot more.
- everybody and their mama knows that they lie not only about economy but also about all other indicators too.
- honestly I don't think that using city lights to demonstrate economic growth might be a little flawed. Especially when people start living in vertical residential complexes.
For example, one “free country” has been arresting people for Facebook posts, and praying silently outside clinics.
Can’t question western “democracies.”
US is country #57 (about 25th percentile, from the top) with a score of 84/100 for its general "Freedom of the World" score.
And number #13 (roughly 7% percentile, from the top) with 76/100 for Internet freedom.
Which comes back to my point: how do you really determine who is “free” and who is not.
Looking at the state of the UK, Europe with people being arrested for social media posts, and the US with deportations for speeches, it appears to be a useless criteria.
And the fact that no one just assumes that is weird. In general, let’s imagine you had a politician who took power of a country that was recovering, and then by the time they left power their country was a literal pile of rubble and they shot themselves and their family in the head in order to avoid the consequences of their own actions… you’d assume that any positive story about them is probably bullshit. But for some reason the moment it’s Hitler everyone’s got an excuse.
And if someone accidentally killed 6 million of their own citizens we’d naturally all recognize them as one of the worst politicians in human history, but for some reason when they kill 6 million of their own citizens on purpose it’s not a raucous failure that deserves endless ridicule.
I think that’s an interesting question with probably no simple correct answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant
> A tyrant (from Ancient Greek τύραννος (túrannos) 'absolute ruler'), in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to repressive means.[1][2] The original Greek term meant an absolute sovereign who came to power without constitutional right
It has many of the aspects of one, like authoritarianism and centralized control, which arguably could, in the right hands, yield superior outcomes. For example, being able to undertake and complete large infrastructures projects in an ambitious timeframe that would be strangled by political opposition (like NIMBYism or environmental objections) and bureaucratic red tape in the west. Munger was, unsurprisingly, also a fan of China's system.
Again, I'm not a fan of these systems, but pretending they always yield inferior outcomes is dangerous for western democracies, as it could lead to an underestimation of our rivals.
The same is true all the way back to the Ancient Empires which were also usually ruled by dictators. The era of Marcus Aurelius was an absolute Golden Age in Rome. Yet the era of his son all but ensured the collapse of Rome. Of course the same is becoming increasingly true of democracies where political messaging has become effective enough to regularly make people vote in highly irrational ways.
Honestly, regression to the mean is a stronger explanation here than "benevolent and effective dictatorship".
I'm flabbergasted that you look at 2025 Russia and consider the word undisputed apt. How ... narrow-minded.
And I think Ukraine is obviously going to be a major turning point in history. Ukraine created an absolutely massive army by combining massive scale forced conscription alongside preventing men of "fighting age" (18-60) from leaving the country, and they're similarly being armed with hundreds of billions of dollars in Western arms - far more than we even supported the USSR with during WW2. And yet Russia, a country that could barely hold itself together in the 90s, and is under severe sanctions, is winning. We're looking at the absolute end of any concept of a unipolar world, and I think that's a great thing for everybody.
I am not aware of any group, other than internet trolls and the gullible people who fall for them, claiming that Russia is winning. Territorially, Russia holds far less of Ukraine in the fourth year of the war than it did in the first month: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/3qbcv/16/?wmode=opaque Russia still hasn't even recovered from the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2022.
The huge Soviet-era stockpiles have been depleted. Yesterday, the loss of one Russian tank was reported. The day before that: zero. The day before that: also zero. The shortage of vehicles and other equipment has forced Russians to fight using dirt bikes and minivans, leading to record losses that continue to climb month after month: https://i.imgur.com/PrPvQd8.png
Russian losses in fighting for just 1/10 of Ukraine have long surpassed German losses during their World War II offensive in Ukraine. They are now on track to exceed Soviet losses during their own offensive, with very little to show for it. One of the main axes of fighting is Pokrovsk, which lies just 25 miles outside Donetsk, a city Russia already held in 2022. After four years, Russian forces have still not reached Pokrovsk.
Is this what victory is supposed to look like? Is this what you call an "undisputed superpower"? For Russia, this is not just a defeat: it is one of the greatest military disasters in their entire history.
You should be careful with this numbers because Western media reported numbers seem to be inflated and not agree with other statistics. And obviously nobody who knows real numbers will publish them.
Also you should remember that many of those who died were convicted criminals. So if you count only non-convicts the numbers would be even lower.
This is a desperate cope. Russian losses in the fight for just 10% of Ukraine now exceed even the independently collected and individually verified Russian losses, where every name is known and confirmed.
The German Army Group South captured Ukraine between June and November 1941, suffering an estimated 80 000 to 100 000 killed in action. In contrast, Mediazona has verified the deaths of 121 507 Russian soldiers, with the current estimate around 165 000, because their count is based on sources like obituaries and lags behind events. There is no way to spin it into anything even remotely resembling a "victory." Germans lost 27 000 soldiers in the battle of Kyiv. Russia loses that many for each small tiny provinical town, with Kyiv being hopelessly out of reach.
> Also you should remember that many of those who died were convicted criminals. So if you count only non-convicts the numbers would be even lower.
And if we count only those who own property in Rublyovka, would the number be zero?
Let's say nominal wages in a dictatorship have tripled since it started a war, and the official exchange rate hasn't moved. Then real wages have tripled. But since you can't exchange currency at the official rate (it's fiction) it's more realistic to say inflation is at least 200% and real wages have not increased.
As a side note this is also the point of things like IMF, World Bank, etc also publishing their own numbers. They don't simply ask each government what their numbers are, but independently work to determine the numbers themselves using as reliable of source as they can find.
I'd also add that when the mega sanctions bomb initially hit, the official numbers from Russia were actually more grim than those being published by the IMF/World Bank. That was exactly the time when the motivation to lie would have been, by far, at its greatest for Russia since consumer confidence (and confidence in the currency itself) play an ostensibly significant role in such scenarios. Yet they continued to publish honest, and even pessimistic, numbers.
"11,640,559 of international immigrants live in Russian Federation, which represents 8% of Russian Federation's population"[0]
I'd recommend to critically examine your sources of information about Russia.
[0] https://seeecadata.iom.int/msite/seeecadata/country/russian-...
But when asked for the list of children, Ukrainian regime managed to produce a list with only 339 names and not too convincing explanation of this hundredfold reduction compared to previous claims.
This bit of propaganda exploiting and twisting Russian evacuation of children without parents from the war zone didn't age well.
"When asked why Kyiv didn’t present a more extensive list, given that 339 names are less than 2% of the total number of forcefully taken children, Euronews sources explained it was a decision based on previous experience.
“There is a risk that Moscow would try to buy time claiming it takes longer to check the names, while trying to change the identities of Ukrainian children further, making it impossible to track,” the source said." [0]
[0] https://www.euronews.com/2025/06/04/ukraine-demands-return-o...
1.44 for Russia is sadly in line with the west. Better than many European countries (Italy/'Spain 1.2), only a bit worse than US (1.6).
They have a very shit time projecting power across their border, let alone across the ocean.
Nvm it got dismantled by various people who use nightlight metrics for living. NBER also did a sophisticated night lights study of PRC in 2017 - same year as OG Martinez study using naive methodology as Henderson original work from early 2010s - and found PRC's reported GDP was actually _underestimated_ using night light data. But useful idiots will gobble up authoritarian gov inflate narrative.
For obvious reasons this study by multiple staff economists at the FED doesn't get any attention in western MSM, but one by an assistant prof of public policy somehow does. Also note scope, multiple staff economics focusing on PRC, versus assist prof who managed to collate data for every country. Almost as if it's good self marketing considering Martinez keeps updating study with same rudimentary methodology every few years to get clicks.
E: I'm guessing this is now going to make rounds with the Shih/Elkobi's 1/3 of PRC local gov spending all their revenue on debt repayment wank graph being popularized recently that's comparably retarded.
Yet every year since 2017 the Martinez study gets play in mainstream media (MSM) because autocracy incompetent vs democracy plays well. In 2022 Martinez updated the study (I think also 2019, 2024 i.e. milked forever), with same methodology issue said insisted trend continues. Cycle repeats usually synced to some other retarded reporting to PRC economy going to explode (will also be milked forever).
In this case I'm assuming the chart making it's way around reddit and now socials on Shih/Elkobi study that inflate PRC subnational debt situation by conflating principle+interest (tldr bad methodology using non-standard metric to exaggerate debt risk), which like Martinez has been called out back in 2022 after publication. Customary in these discussions of unserious providence is bringing up the unserious Martinez study, which useful idiots continue to take seriously.