Seminars

◈ 주   제: What’s behind the Lights? ― A Case Study on a Newly Developed Region in South Korea

◈ 발표자: 박한진 (박사수료)

◈ 일   시: 2024년 5월 21일 화요일 11:30~12:30

◈ 장   소: 우석경제관(223동) 504호

◈ 주   관: 경제학부, 경제연구소 한국경제혁신센터, SSK, BK21 

◈ 초   록

Nighttime lights have been increasingly used by economists as a proxy particularly for economic activity. Prior studies have shown that luminosity has more powerful predictability for cross-sectional GDP than for GDP growth, and hence nighttime lights data is less useful for time-series analysis. However, the weak relationship between lights and GDP in growth data remains poorly understood. This study explores what types of activities induce changes in lights by analyzing building data in a newly developed region, Sejong-si, in South Korea. The results suggest that lights growth is mainly derived from changes in extensive margin represented by building growth, which likely leads to the weak association between lights growth and GDP growth. The results also show that the strong relationship between lights growth and building growth in the long term depends on vacancies, which are likely to have a negative effect on the usefulness of lights growth to predict GDP growth.