Publication: Measuring Global Economic Activity Using Air Pollution
Loading...
Date
2023-05-18
ISSN
Published
2023-05-18
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper uses satellite readings of nitrogen (NO2) air pollution, a byproduct of combustion, to improve the measurement of global economic activity. The proposed approach improves upon night light measures for countries where data manipulation, conflict, or other factors have led to poor national accounts. The paper also shows that existing country rankings of gross domestic product accuracy over the past 15 years are unreliable, even among advanced economies. For example, the paper shows that during COVID, in France, the UK and Spain gross domestic product in 2020 was underreported by 76, 181, and 205 basis points respectively. The methodological contribution extends previous Error-Measurement frameworks which, suffer from error-in-variables biases, with an objective, data-driven identification strategy exploiting the plausibly orthogonal measurement errors between nitrogen dioxide and night lights, which are measured at different times.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ezran, Irene; Morris, Stephen D.; Rama, Martín; Riera-Crichton, Daniel. 2023. Measuring Global Economic Activity Using Air Pollution. Policy Research Working Papers; 10445. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39827 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The Promise of Integration: Opportunities in a Changing Global Economy(World Bank, Washington DC, 2023-04-04)The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region has proved to be relatively resilient in the face of increased debt stress, stubborn inflation, and uncertainty arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Income and employment have largely recovered from the pandemic, poverty has receded, and markets remain guardedly optimistic about the near future. However, global uncertainty is rising, including a recent wave of bank failures in the US and Europe. Strengthening resilience, both on the health and macroeconomic fronts, will be paramount. Progress remains pending in both vaccination coverage and health system preparedness, while the institutionality of macroeconomic policy in some countries is being questioned. The evolution of the global economy is providing two new areas of opportunity for the region: the trend toward nearshoring-moving production closer to the US and European markets-and the imperative to combat climate change, which is giving the region a new comparative advantage in sun, wind, hydro, and natural capital. Taking advantage of these will require greater integration into the global economy. Yet, paradoxically, in the face of these opportunities. LAC is becoming less integrated. Trade intensity has largely stagnated, and foreign direct investment (FDI) to most countries has declined. Beyond the long-term structural reforms needed to reduce systemic risk, raise the level and quality of education, invest in infrastructure, and ensure well-functioning financial markets, this report calls to preserve the reputational gains of the past 20 years in terms of macro stability and streamlining regulation dealing with customs and transport to lower the cost of doing business in the region. Export promotion agencies and investment promotion agencies can also help as they have proven track records. A comprehensive approach to both shorter- and longer-term reforms could move LAC toward a renewed and more dynamic engagement with the global economy.Publication Transport Activity Measurement Toolkit for On-Road Vehicles : Practitioners' Guide(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06)Although urbanization is frequently cited as a major cause of greenhouse gas and local air pollution emissions growth, it could be better understood as one of the crucial links between climate and development. Urbanization is a major driver of development, and once in cities, people tend to increase their mobility dramatically, driving an increase in greenhouse gas and other emissions from transport. The demand for transport is not limited only to urban environments. As each economy becomes richer, its demand for passenger and freight mobility increases. This increase in car usage coupled with a tendency to have a lower number of passengers per car, has been sufficient to offset the improvements gained in vehicle fuel efficiency. The increasing transport demand, if not accompanied by adequate growth in infrastructure and facilities, leads to rising congestion, time loss, and air quality deterioration that can stifle economic growth and quality of life. Finding the delicate balance of policy options to achieve long-term improvements in on-road transport and reduce the impact of its externalities is critical and needs to be tailored to each locale. This requires measurements both to design the interventions and evaluate their impacts. This transport activity measurement toolkit (TAMT) has been developed specifically to simplify this measurement process by providing standardized software, data collection forms, and a consistent standardized methodology.Publication Fooled by the Cycle(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-06)This paper studies the time series behavior of a set of widely-used social indicators and uncovers two important stylized facts. First, not all social indicators are created equal in terms of the importance of cyclical fluctuations. While some social indicators such as the unemployment rate and monetary poverty show large cyclical fluctuations, other social measures such as the Human Development Index are, by construction, dominated by long-run trends. Second, interestingly, yet not surprisingly, a large part of the cyclical fluctuations in social indicators can be explained by cyclical changes in income (proxied by real GDP per capita). For this reason, countries with large cyclical income volatility exhibit, in turn, large cyclical changes in some of these social indicators (particularly in those indicators that are more prone to cyclical fluctuations). Since cyclical income volatility is much larger in the developing world, these two critical stylized facts raise fundamental issues regarding the duration of improvements in social indicators (like the ones observed in many developing countries during the last commodity super-cycle). After a detailed conceptual and methodological discussion of these issues, and relying on a global sample of industrial and developing countries, this paper digs deeper into the importance of cyclical versus permanent components by extending the seminal contribution of Datt and Ravallion (1992). In particular, it shows that more than 40 percent of the fall in monetary poverty observed in Latin America and the Caribbean during the so-called Golden Decade can be attributed to cyclical changes in income. While in principle universal, these concerns are particularly relevant in the developing world where, compared to developed countries, output volatility is larger and driven, to a large extent, by external factors (such as commodity prices).Publication Policy Implications of Non-linear Effects of Tax Changes on Output(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01)An earlier paper titled "Non-linear effects of tax changes on output: The role of the initial level of taxation," estimated tax multipliers using (i) a novel dataset on value-added taxes for 51 countries (21 industrial and 30 developing) for the period 1970-2014, and (ii) the so-called narrative approach developed by Romer and Romer (2010) to properly identify exogenous tax changes. The main finding is that, in line with existing theoretical distortionary and disincentive-based arguments, the effect of tax changes on output is highly non-linear. The tax multiplier is essentially zero under relatively low/moderate initial tax rate levels and more negative as the initial tax rate and the size of the change in the tax rate increase. This companion paper first shows that these findings have important policy implications, given that the initial level of taxes varies greatly across countries and thus so will the potential output effect of changing tax rates. The paper then turns to some specific policy applications. It focuses on the relevance of the arguments for revenue mobilization in countries with low levels of provision of public goods and social and infrastructure gaps, as well as in commodity-dependent countries. The paper then considers some practical implications for the standard debt sustainability analysis. Lastly, it evaluates the implications of the findings for the Laffer curve.Publication Fiscal Multipliers in Recessions and Expansions : Does It Matter Whether Government Spending Is Increasing or Decreasing?(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07)Using non-linear methods, this paper finds that existing estimates of government spending multipliers in expansion and recession may yield biased results by ignoring whether government spending is increasing or decreasing. For industrial countries, the problem originates in the fact that, contrary to one's priors, it is not always the case that government spending is going up in recessions (i.e., acting countercyclically). In almost as many cases, government spending is actually going down (i.e., acting procyclically). Since the economy does not respond symmetrically to government spending increases or decreases, the "true" long-run multiplier for bad times (and government spending going up) turns out to be 2.3 compared to 1.3 if we just distinguish between recession and expansion. In the case of developing countries, the bias results from the fact that the multiplier for recessions and government spending going down (the "when-it-rains-it-pours" phenomenon) is larger than when government spending is going up.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication World Development Report 2018(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018)Every year, the World Bank's World Development Report takes on a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 Report, Learning to Realize Education's Promise, is the first ever devoted entirely to education. Now is an excellent time for it: education has long been critical for human welfare, but is even more so in a time of rapid economic change. The Report explores four main themes. First, education's promise: Education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies - both within and outside the education system. Second, the learning crisis: Despite gains in education access, recent learning assessments show that many young people around the world, especially from poor families, are leaving school unequipped with even the most foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. Third, promising interventions to improve learning: Research from areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, or school management have identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, that teachers are skilled as well as motivated, and that other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, learning at scale: Achieving learning throughout an education system will require more than just scaling up effective interventions. Change requires overcoming technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and being adaptive when implementing programs.Publication The Mexican Social Protection System in Health(World Bank, Washington DC, 2013-01)With a population of 113 million and a per-capita Gross Domestic Product, or GDP of US$10,064 (current U.S. dollars), Mexico is one of the largest and highest-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The country has benefited from sustained economic growth during the last decade, which was temporarily interrupted by the financial and economic crisis. Real GDP is projected to grow 3.8 percent and 3.6 percent in 2012 and 2013, respectively (International Monetary Fund, or IMF 2012). Despite this growth, poverty in the country remains high; with half of the population living below the national poverty line. The country is also highly heterogeneous, with large socioeconomic differences across states and across urban and rural areas. In 2010, while the extreme poverty ratio in the Federal District and the states of Colima and Nuevo Leon was below 3 percent, in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca it was 25 percent or higher. These large regional differences are also found in other indicators of well-being, such as years of schooling, housing conditions, and access to social services. This case study assesses key features and achievements of the Social Protection System in Health (Sistema de Proteccion Social en Salud) in Mexico, and particularly of its main pillar, Popular Health Insurance (Seguro Popular, PHI). It analyzes the contribution of this policy to the establishment and implementation of universal health coverage in Mexico. In 2003, with the reform of the General Health Law, the PHI was institutionalized as a subsidized health insurance scheme open to the population not covered by the social security schemes. Today, the PHI covers all of its intended affiliates, about 52 million peoplePublication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication World Development Report 1987(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)This report, consisting of two parts, is the tenth in the annual series assessing development issues. Part I reviews recent trends in the world economy and their implications for the future prospects of developing countries. It stresses that better economic performance is possible in both industrial and developing countries, provided the commitment to economic policy reforms is maintained and reinforced. In regard to the external debt issues, the report argues for strengthened cooperation among industrial countries in the sphere of macroeconomic policy to promote smooth adjustment to the imbalances caused by external payments (in developing countries). Part II reviews and evaluates the varied experience with government policies in support of industrialization. Emphasis is placed on policies which affect both the efficiency and sustainability of industrial transformation, especially in the sphere of foreign trade. The report finds that developing countries which followed policies that promoted the integration of their industrial sector into the international economy through trade have fared better than those which insulated themselves from international competition.