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Satellite Data Strongly Suggests That China, Russia and Other Authoritarian Countries Are Fudging Their GDP Reports (washingtonpost.com)
Christopher Ingraham, writing for The Washington Post: 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.
Real GDP is the net of domestic output minus price changes, ie inflation. Look into how our inflation measurements have been contorted over the years and you'll see how it's "grossly" under-reported, thus GDP is overstated.
The US has as well ever since it made financial entity transactions part of GDP, something no other nation does.
Tell that to someone who grew up in the USSR or GDR -- and try to keep a straight face. It's certainly a cause for concern here and getting worse; but no - we're no where NEAR a true authoritarian regime.
North Korea wishes to point out its superiority in cloaking devices.
They only appear to be in the dark.
She only lost because Russia and China inflated their GDP. That, and a bit of Comey. And misogyny of course.
In the 1960s, Robert Heinlein went to the Soviet Union as part of an opening salvo of goodwill between the countries. He looked at the shipping and roads in and out of Moscow and realized there was no way it could support whatever X millions of people they were claiming to he on rough parity with New York.
It's been estimated it required about 50% of Soviet GDP to even maintain a facade of parity with the US military.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
GDP is NOT night time light volume.
Of course not. But it is a rough proxy for GDP. Why would it systematically differ between authoritarian and non-authoritarian countries? An obvious answer is data fudging.
A city with street lights but no people do not produce GDP. On the other hand, a factory that only works in the daytime
Why would these differ between authoritarian and non-authoritarian countries?
China is known for "ghost cities", but they were never really that common, many of them are now occupied, and they would lead to under reporting of GDP, not the over reporting actually observed.
It's obviously not a perfect measure of GDP, but actually people have done the research and shown a strong link between the two. If, as you claim, you have a PhD (and it's in a relevant field: sorry, an English PhD gives you zero qualifications here), you're not only free, but should have the capability to put out your own research disproving this work. Of course, given the quality of logic in your post, I suspect you don't have that capability. For example:
A city with street lights but no people do not produce GDP.
The entire point of both a city and street lights is to have people. It's true that China has been building "ghost cities, but all that does is suggest that in fact the light-based estimate overestimates economic activity, which just makes the point in TFA that much stronger.
On the other hand, a factory that only works in the daytime, like in industrialized countries such as western europe and east China, do not have light volume at night.
Have you seen a factory at night before? Or even seen a factory in a movie at night? Most of them absolutely put out light at night (they're usually glittering beacons of light, in fact). In fact if they have smokestacks or chimneys they're required to or they're a huge safety risk to aircraft. Also lots (most?) factories in most climates run in mornings and evenings before/after sunrise, and it's not uncommon for them to run overnight: downtime is a huge waste of money when you have an expensive factory. In fact, factories not running overnight would be an indicator of economic weakness, such as happened to the US auto industry in the 2000s.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Finance 501 taught me that GDP is the money supply times the velocity of money
Your education is incomplete. There are multiple ways to calculate GDP and they use several of them for official numbers to ensure some amount of consistency. In principle each method should give (roughly) equal results though in practice it isn't always so easy. The Economist has a decent article on how it generally is calculated.
When I was in the USSR, a Ukranian told me that he was just as free as I. He said I could go stand in front of the White House and yell, "George Bush is a fool!" with no recourse. He said he could also go stand in the middle of Red Square and shout, "George Bush is a fool!" with no recourse too.