Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies

Call for paper: special issue “Illuminating Progress: Night Light and Economic Dynamics in Emerging Economies” by Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies

Guest editor:

Professor Ziyang (John) Zhang, Audencia Business School, France

Email : [email protected]

Dr Sardar Ahmed, Liverpool University Management School, UK

Email : [email protected]

Professor Rong Ding, NEOMA Business School, France

Email : [email protected]

While the brightness of night light unambiguously depends on a variety of socio-economic and cultural factors, utilizing night light as a proxy of economic activity when limited alternative data sources are available or when the official economic statistics are less credible is a breakthrough that advances economic research that would be otherwise impossible to conduct. After the publication of Henderson et al. (2011) on American Economic Review using the brightness of night light as a novel measure of economic growth, more than 100 papers that investigate a wide range of issues such as the impact of flood on economic activity (Kocornik-Mina et al., 2020), carbon emission reduction (Chen et al., 2021), government aid and economic growth (Dreher et al., 2019) and the influence of high education on economic development (Castello-Climent et al., 2017) have come out in the economics literature. Night light data have also been deployed to identify the real extent of urban agglomeration and to estimate the size of urban population (Elvidge et al., 1997; Small et al., 2011). While a high percentage of these studies focus on developed countries, more scholarly attention is clearly required to explore issues in emerging economies.

In emerging economies, the economic activities may be even more reflected in the night light as was witnessed during the Covid-19 lockdown in China. Further, as emerging economies are more prone to the issues such as environmental pollution and the development of infrastructure, night light may be more relevant to these specific economic issues. Due to the dynamic nature of emerging economies, innovative research methods may generate more interesting findings to the existing literature.

Topics of this special issue may include but are not limited to the following:

1. Night light as indicator of economic disruption during and recovery patterns after the Covid-19 pandemic;
2. Regional inequalities and night light intensity;
3. Night light and informal economic activity;
4. Night light, land use and pollution;
5. Night light and infrastructure development;
6. Innovative methodologies using night light for economic analysis in emerging economies;

Submission deadline: 31^st August, 2024

While the brightness of night light unambiguously depends on a variety of socio-economic and cultural factors, utilizing night light as a proxy of economic activity when limited alternative data sources are available or when the official economic statistics are less credible is a breakthrough that advances economic research that would be otherwise impossible to conduct. More than 100 papers that investigate a wide range of issues such as the impact of flood on economic activity (Kocornik-Mina et al., 2020), carbon emission reduction (Chen et al., 2021), government aid and economic growth (Dreher et al., 2019) and the influence of high education on economic development (Castello-Climent et al., 2017) have come out in the economics literature. Night light data have also been deployed to identify the real extent of urban agglomeration and to estimate the size of urban population (Elvidge et al., 1997; Small et al., 2011).

In emerging economies, the economic activities may be even more reflected in the night light as was witnessed during the Covid-19 lockdown in China. Further, as emerging economies are more prone to the issues such as environmental pollution and the development of infrastructure, night light may be more relevant to these specific economic issues. Due to the dynamic nature of emerging economies, innovative research methods may generate more interesting findings to the existing literature.

Topics of this special issue may include but are not limited to the following:

1. Night light as indicator of economic disruption during and recovery patterns after the Covid-19 pandemic;
2. Regional inequalities and night light intensity;
3. Night light and informal economic activity;
4. Night light, land use and pollution;
5. Night light and infrastructure development;
6. Innovative methodologies using night light for economic analysis in emerging economies;

 

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