Naver, the popular South Korean portal site, has an interesting article about using lights at night to measure economic growth. Three researchers at Brown University used imagery taken from 1992-2009 by U.S. Air Force weather satellites to develop a proxy for measuring GDP growth (or contraction) by measuring the amount of light visible at night from outer space. The idea being to get a better idea of GDP changes in countries, like North Korea, that don’t release or compile economic data. One of their images, contrasting brightly-lit South Korea with a dark North, was made famous by former Secretary of Defense McNamara Rumsfeld.
