Nighttime Lights as a Proxy for Economic Indicators: The Case of Russia

In this paper, we test the possibility of using night luminosity data as a proxy for economic indicators of those territories of the Russian Federation for which there are no data of some economic indicators. The use of night luminosity data may partially solve the main problem of official statistics of the Russian Federation, namely, the low quality of incoming statistical data for administrative and territorial units — municipal districts of constituent entities of the Federation and municipal urban districts. Thus, during the research, higher-quality, reliable and operational data will be used (obtained using proxy data on the night luminosity of the earth), which will improve the quality of management decisions made on the basis of the results of the above studies. The study is based on the night luminosity data of the Russian Federation from 2013 to 2018 provided by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), designed to collect high-quality radiometric data for digital analysis and input into numerical models. An empirical analysis revealed the existence of a significant relationship between the intensity of night illumination, on the one hand, and socio-economic indicators for the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, as well as the population for the administrative-territorial units of the Ural Federal District, on the other hand. Thus, the possibility of using the data on the intensity of the Earth’s night luminosity as a proxy for economic indicators of those territories of the Russian Federation for which there are no data of some economic indicators was verified and confirmed. Consequently, the great potential of using night-time satellite data on night luminosity as a proxy for economic indicators of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation has been confirmed.