In this episode we chat with David Weil about his paper “Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space’”. David and his co-authors, J. Vernon Henderson and Adam Storeygard, use nigh lights from satellite data as a proxy for GDP measure. As an application, they examine growth in Sub Saharan African regions over the last 17 years. They find that real incomes in non-coastal areas have grown faster by 1/3 of an annual percentage point than coastal areas; non-malarial areas have grown faster than malarial ones by 1/3 to 2/3 annual percent points; and primate city regions have grown no faster than hinterland areas. Such applications point toward a research program in which “empirical growth” need no longer be synonymous with “national income accounts.”