Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Bluhm, Richard
Author-Email: bluhm@mak.uni-hannover.de
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Macroeconomics, Leibniz University Hannover,
	 and UNU-MERIT
Author-Name: Krause, Melanie
Author-Email: melanie.krause@uni-hamburg.de
Author-Workplace-Name: Hamburg University, Department of Economics
Title: Top Lights: Bright cities and their contribution to economic development
Abstract: Tracking the development of cities in emerging economies is difficult 
	 with conventional data. We show that satellite images of nighttime 
	 lights are a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, 
	 provided they are first corrected for topcoding. The commonly-used data 
	 fail to capture the true brightness of many cities. We present a 
	 stylized model of urban luminosity and empirical evidence which both 
	 suggest that these 'top lights' can be characterized by a Pareto 
	 distribution. We then propose a simple correction procedure which 
	 recovers the full distribution of city lights. Our results show that the 
	 brightest cities account for nearly a third of global economic activity. 
	 Applying this approach to cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, we find that 
	 primate cities are outgrowing secondary cities but are changing from 
	 within. Poorer neighborhoods are developing, but sub-centers are forming 
	 so that Africa's largest cities are also becoming increasingly 
	 fragmented.
Classification-JEL: O10, O18, R11, R12
Keywords: Development, urban growth, night lights, top-coding, inequality
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 20181105
Number: 2018-041
File-URL: https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2018/wp2018-041.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2018041