- Title
- Using night time data as a measure of gross domestic product in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Creator
- Hamman, Nicolene
- Subject
- Data
- Subject
- Gross domestic product -- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Date Issued
- 2022-12
- Date
- 2022-12
- Type
- Doctoral's theses
- Type
- Thesis
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/59457
- Identifier
- vital:62119
- Description
- Over the last decade, a bold move has been made by researchers to shift focus on improving and establishing accurate and reliable measures of economic activity across the globe. With an everchanging global economic landscape, unreliable GDP statistics and the lack thereof have held a nascent impact on formulating appropriate stabilization policies. This, in turn, have affected the affairs of nations, especially low income and developing ones. In an attempt to find alternative ways to measure economic activity, night time lights data have emerged in numerous empirical studies as a novel way of attempting to measure economic growth and development. Various studies have found this to be useful for countries that do not have statistical capabilities such as poor nations, while other studies have put forward arguments in favour of a possible non-linear relationship between GDP and night time lights data. Against this background, this study implores night time lights data extensively to establish whether it can serve as a possible measure of GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1992 and 2012. Based on the results obtained from testing for a positive correlation between GDP and night time lights data in Sub-Saharan Africa, the study further aim to use night time lights data as a measure of GDP in the regressions against proxies of well-being, urbanization, and environmental degradation. The significance of the study relates to the fact that the estimation accuracy of GDP is positively influenced by spatial and radiation resolution of night time lights data. In addition, by taking a country-specific approach using more advanced econometric estimation techniques, this study improves on the empirical literature pertaining to African countries. All facets of pooled ordinary least squares (POLS), the pooled mean group estimators, as well as the wavelet coherence estimation techniques were the three approaches used to investigated correlations between night time lights data and economic activity. Overall findings indicate little evidence that night time lights data derived from the DMSP-OLS archive can serve as a strong measure of GDP in regressions across the Sub-Saharan African region. Recommendations and avenues for future research are outlined at the end of the study.
- Description
- Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Business and Economics Science, School of Applied Accounting, 2022
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- Format
- 1 online resource (xv, 340 pages)
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Business and Economics Science
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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Collections
NMU School of Accounting
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Hamman, N Dec 2022.pdf | 8 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |