Studying economic black holes
Lessons from North Korea
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7474785 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephan Haggard (0000-0003-1571-2580, Global Strategy Group), Kyoochul Kim (Ewha Womans University), Munseob Lee (Global Strategy Group, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 201 |
| Pages | 107315 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | World Development (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0305-750X • E-ISSN: 1873-5991 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.worlddev.2026.107315 |
| OpenAlex | W7124697487 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 53 |
The study identifies six innovative methods to analyze economies with scarce data. • Forensic economic approaches uncover credible insights from authoritarian regimes. • Satellite, trade, price, and refugee data together reveal hidden patterns of activity. • Text mining of official documents exposes unintended signals about economic change. • Emerging data technologies promise to transform research on closed and fragile states. Some economies are “black holes” where reliable data is scarce due to government control, low capacity, or conflict. Despite these challenges, researchers have found ways to gather useful information. This paper draws on the literature on North Korea to review six key methods: satellite imagery, reports from aid agencies, trade data, prices, refugee surveys, and official documents. These sources are imperfect, and require close attention to research design and measurement error. Nonetheless, they demonstrate that it is possible to extract information from economic black holes and to draw meaningful insights about them
Authoritarianism · Emerging markets · Government (linguistics · Key (lock · Refugee · Unintended consequences · Asian Industrial and Economic Development · Economic Sanctions and International Relations · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies
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| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |