New metrics for environmental economics: Gridded economic data

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in interest in the interaction between economic activity and geophysical variables. A major hurdle for current research is the complete disjunction of socioeconomic and geophysical data. The present study describes the results of the GEcon project, which has developed a geophysically based data set on economic activity. The G-Econ data presented here estimate gross output at a 1-degree longitude by 1-degree latitude resolution at a global scale for virtually all terrestrial grid cells. We provide applications to the impacts of global warming and to the question of the impact of geography on the economic condition of tropical Africa.