IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/9088.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can Medium-Resolution Satellite Imagery Measure Economic Activity at Small Geographies ? Evidence from Landsat in Vietnam

Author

Listed:
  • Goldblatt,Ran Philip
  • Heilmann,Kilian Tobias
  • Vaizman,Yonatan

Abstract

This study explores the potential and the limits of medium-resolution satellite data as a proxy for economic activity at small geographic units. Using a commune-level dataset from Vietnam, it compares the performance of commonly used nightlight data and higher resolution Landsat imagery which measures daytime light reflection. The analysis suggests that Landsat outperforms nighttime lights at predicting enterprise counts, employment, and expenditure in simple regression models. A parsimonious combination of the first two moments of the Landsat spectral bands can explain a reasonable share of the variation in economic activity in the cross-section. There is however poor prediction power of either satellite measure for changes over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Goldblatt,Ran Philip & Heilmann,Kilian Tobias & Vaizman,Yonatan, 2019. "Can Medium-Resolution Satellite Imagery Measure Economic Activity at Small Geographies ? Evidence from Landsat in Vietnam," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9088, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9088
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/168331576612750230/pdf/Can-Medium-Resolution-Satellite-Imagery-Measure-Economic-Activity-at-Small-Geographies-Evidence-from-Landsat-in-Vietnam.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Patrick Lehnert & Michael Niederberger & Uschi Backes-Gellner & Eric Bettinger, 2020. "Proxying Economic Activity with Daytime Satellite Imagery: Filling Data Gaps Across Time and Space," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0165, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW), revised Sep 2022.
    2. Gibson, John & Olivia, Susan & Boe-Gibson, Geua & Li, Chao, 2021. "Which night lights data should we use in economics, and where?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    3. John Gibson & Susan Olivia & Geua Boe‐Gibson, 2020. "Night Lights In Economics: Sources And Uses," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(5), pages 955-980, December.
    4. Daniel Straulino & Juan C. Saldarriaga & Jairo A. G'omez & Juan C. Duque & Neave O'Clery, 2021. "Uncovering commercial activity in informal cities," Papers 2104.04545, arXiv.org.
    5. Blankespoor,Brian & Ru,Yating & Wood-Sichra,Ulrike & Chambers,Thomas Timothy & You,Liangzhi & Kalvelagen,Erwin, 2022. "Estimating Local Agricultural GDP across the World," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10109, The World Bank.
    6. John Gibson, 2021. "Better Night Lights Data, For Longer," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(3), pages 770-791, June.
    7. repec:lic:licosd:41920 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. John Gibson & Geua Boe-Gibson, 2020. "Three Facts About Night Lights Data," Working Papers in Economics 20/03, University of Waikato.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9088. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.