This paper develops a novel procedure for proxying economic activity with day-time satellite imagery across time periods and spatial units, for which reliable data on economic activity are otherwise not available. In developing this unique proxy, we apply machine-learning techniques to a...

We collect data on the size distribution of all U.S. corporate businesses for 100 years. We document that corporate concentration (e.g., asset share or sales share of the top 1%) has increased persistently over the past century. Rising concentration was stronger in manufacturing and mining...

Choice experiments show that individuals attribute significant value to digitally-enabled services such as social media. We integrate this consumer value into an accounting framework by treating it as the value of own-account production by households of a particular type of leisure services....

Anthropogenic production and operating activities give off heat and emit thermal infrared radiation (TIR) as a fundamental result of the laws of thermodynamics. This study examines whether the strength of TIR measures the dynamics of economic activities and development. Using satellite data on...

During crises, governments resort to extraordinary fiscal and financial measures to mitigate the recessionary impacts of crises. These macroeconomic intervention measures along with aggregate demand and supply shocks and policy choices would affect the exporting environment of a country through...

Definitions of output and input are key to studies of productivity analysis, as they are to the national accounts of countries. This paper systematically reviews alternative definitions at production unit and aggregate levels, illustrating the different perspectives that they provide on...

Long-term data for 30 countries up to 2006 reveal 232 stock-market crashes (multi-year real returns of -25% or less) and 100 depressions (multi-year macroeconomic declines of 10% or more), with 71 of the cases matched by timing. The United States has two of the matched events--the Great...

We build on the Maddison GDP data to assemble international time series from before 1914 on real per capita personal consumer expenditure, C. We also improve the GDP data in many cases. The C variable comes closer than GDP to the consumption concept that enters into usual asset-pricing...

This paper describes recent trends in productivity growth in the EU and the US. By adopting a sectoral perspective, we achieve a deeper understanding of the compositional patterns of aggregate growth and shed light on the reasons why the EU productivity has lagged behind the US during the period...

Monthly economic indicators are used for a variety of purposes, from studying business cycles to determining economic policy and making informed business decisions. China's published monthly industrial output statistics could hardly be more confusing, with changes in variables, in coverage, in...