By examining discrepancies between officially reported GDP growth figures and the actual economic growth implied by … satellite-based night time light (NTL) density, we investigate whether democracies manipulate officially reported GDP figures … the incumbent. These results are robust to allowing the elasticity of official GDP statistics to NTL to be country …

their models, while aggregate indicators such as GDP failed in spite (or perhaps because) of their heavy emphasis on … financially driven growth. In contrast to both critics and proponents of GDP who see it as a purely statistical measure, this … article argues that GDP is in fact a form of numerical rhetoric. Political messages in such estimates were explicit until the …