The commonly-used satellite images of nighttime lights fail to capture the true brightness of most cities. We show that night lights are a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, provided they are first corrected for top-coding. We present a stylized model of urban luminosity and...

This paper analyzes periods of economic stagnation in a panel of countries. We test whether stagnation can be predicted by institutional characteristics and political shocks, and compare the impacts of such variables with those of traditional macroeconomic variables. We examine the determinants...