A study of lights at night suggests dictators lie about economic growth

Since 2002 average reported economic growth in autocracies has been twice as fast as in democracies. New research finds that autocrats greatly overstate their countries' economic growth. He first obtained data on the brightness of countries' lights at night, as measured by satellites, a well-known proxy for GDP. He combined it with data from Freedom House, a think-tank, on countries' political systems. The data showed that dictators' reported GDP tended to grow much faster than satellite images of their countries would suggest. The irregularities were most prevalent in the parts of GDP figures that are easiest to manipulate such as investment and government spending, and was bigger when these countries' growth was low compared with others'. In updated figures he has provided to us, cumulative gdp growth between 2002 and 2021 in countries "Not free" is nearly cut in half: from 147% to 76%. The explanation is probably simple: opportunity and motive. Chart sources: "How much should we trust the dictator's GDP growth estimates?", by L.R. Martinez, 2022; Freedom House; World Bank.