Tracking economic activity in response to the COVID-19 crisis using nighttime lights – The case of Morocco

Abstract

Over the past decade, nighttime lights have become a widely used proxy for measuring economic activity. This paper examines the potential for high frequency nighttime lights data to provide “near real-time” tracking of the economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis in Morocco. At the national level, there exists a statistically significant correlation between quarterly movements in Morocco's overall nighttime light intensity and movements in its real GDP. This finding supports the cautious use of lights data to track the economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis at higher temporal frequencies and at the subnational and city levels, for which GDP data are unavailable. Relative to its pre-COVID-19 trend growth path of lights, Morocco experienced a large drop in the overall intensity of its lights in March 2020 following the country's first COVID-19 case and the introduction of strict lockdown measures, from which it has subsequently struggled to recover. At the subnational and city levels, while all regions and cities examined shared in March's national decline in nighttime light intensity, some suffered much larger declines than others. Since then, the relative effects of the COVID-19 shock across regions and cities appear to have largely persisted. Notwithstanding these findings, however, further research is required to ascertain the exact causes of the observed changes in light intensity and to fully verify that the results are driven by anthropogenic causes.