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Category: Macro

Published January 25, 2011

Economic Growth Seen from Outer Space

Laura Freschi over at Aid Watch has just posted an interesting map that shows the amount of light that can be seen from outer space and which Henderson et al. (NBER, 2009) have used as a proxy for economic growth.

The map of the world is interesting in itself, but I find the 1992 and 2008 maps of the Korean peninsula to be more impressive, as they show how much economic growth took place in South Korea, but not in North Korea. Likewise, the map of Rwanda before, during, and after the genocide of 1994 is impressive.

(H/T: Eric Green, via Twitter)

Published January 22, 2011

Is China the New Japan?

I grew up in the 1980s and the 1990s. Back then, cultural references to the superiority of the Japanese economic model where everywhere. Most of William Gibson’s Neuromancer takes place in Japan’s Chiba prefecture, which had become a suburb of Tokyo populated with expatriates much like New York or London are today. In John McTiernan’s “Die Hard,” a team of terrorists hijacks the Nakatomi Corporation’s office building in downtown Los Angeles in an effort to steal $640 million in bearer bonds. The first time I visited the United States on my own in 1996, I met people my age who were learning Japanese in college, “to do business with Japan.”

In short, if you grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, some part of your mind probably still equates “Japan” with “economic might.”

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