Social Transfers and Growth: Evidence from Luminosity Data
利用卫星灯光数据作为经济增长的代理变量，评估哥伦比亚家庭现金转移项目Familias en Accion对市级增长率和人均增长的正面影响。
The effects of social transfers on growth are still unclear. The limitations of national accounts at subnational levels in developing countries have confined the analysis to the use of simulation models and household-level experimental data. This article contributes to the empirical literature by assessing the effects of Colombia’s Familias en Accion, a human development cash transfer program, on municipal growth rates and per capita growth. The staggered introduction of the program in 2001–4 facilitated an identification strategy based on a difference-in-differences estimation. The lack of subnational GDP data is tackled by using luminosity data generated by satellites orbiting the earth, which have demonstrated to be a suitable proxy for economic growth. The results show that the program generates significant positive effects on municipal growth rates.