The View from Above: Applications of Satellite Data in Economics
Name
jep.30.4.171.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
938.83 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2643e1403f5e50d37703d85738177850
Author(s)
Donaldson, Dave
Storeygard, Adam
Date Issued
2016
Journal
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Publisher
American Economic Association
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The past decade or so has seen a dramatic change in the way that economists can learn by watching our planet from above. A revolution has taken place in remote sensing and allied fields such as computer science, engineering, and geography. Petabytes of satellite imagery have become publicly accessible at increasing resolution, many algorithms for extracting meaningful social science information from these images are now routine, and modern cloud-based processing power allows these algorithms to be run at global scale. This paper seeks to introduce economists to the science of remotely sensed data, and to give a flavor of how this new source of data has been used by economists so far and what might be done in the future.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/JEP.30.4.171
