[HN Gopher] Colors of Growth
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Colors of Growth
Author : mhb
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-12-08 13:13 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (papers.ssrn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (papers.ssrn.com)
| mhb wrote:
| We develop a novel approach to measuring long-run economic growth
| by exploiting systematic variation in the use of color in
| European paintings. Drawing inspiration from the literature on
| nighttime lights as a proxy for income, we extract hue,
| saturation, and brightness from millions of pixels to construct
| annual indices for Great Britain, Holland, France, Italy, and
| Germany between 1600 and 1820. These indices track broad trends
| in existing GDP reconstructions while revealing higherfrequency
| fluctuations-such as those associated with wars, political
| instability, and climatic shocks-that traditional series smooth
| over. Our findings demonstrate that light, decomposed into color
| and brightness components, provides a credible and independent
| source of information on early modern economic activity.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Caution: PDF
| BubbleRings wrote:
| I don't understand. The link opens to a web page, and the
| download link is clearly labeled as a PDF. Why the warning? And
| why warn about PDFs in general, have they been having zero day
| embedded malware lately or something?
| snapcaster wrote:
| This comment chain gave me a fun idea to lightly troll
| people. Just comment "Caution: <file format or file type>" on
| a thread with no further explanation and gaslight people into
| thinking there is some problem
| munchler wrote:
| As a photographer, I've noticed that no two photos of a given
| painting ever look the same. There is much variation due to
| lighting, color temperature, sensor capabilities, etc. Without
| controlling for these variables, it's hard to see how comparisons
| can be made accurately.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't think basic color accuracy matters for this, it's more
| macro. In other words, two professionally taken images of a
| painting aren't going to make it look bright and colorful in
| one, and dark and somber in another.
|
| Whether there's a slight green tint, or a certain blue doesn't
| pop quite as much, doesn't seem like it would affect the
| findings.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I've seen exactly what you said isn't going to happen in two
| pro photos of an old (pre-1800s) painting.
|
| One might have been altered to reduce the effect of centuries
| of oil-lamp soot, but it's still true.
| munificent wrote:
| Not just that. A much larger confounding factor is that
| paintings change over time. If you've ever watching a painting
| restoration video, you'll discover that the way a painting
| looks today depends dramatically on its age, how it was stored,
| and what restorations have been applied to it and when. Varnish
| yellows over time. Before electricity, rooms were light by fire
| which deposits ash everywhere.
| dvrp wrote:
| "Our findings [show] that light [...] provides a credible and
| independent source of information on early modern economic
| activity."
|
| Wow!
| nasvay_factory wrote:
| they be like: dark is bad, light is good and popularity of each
| is changing over time
|
| i mean, it's so natural, no? Yin Yang and stuff, like common
| sense type of things.
| calebm wrote:
| Interesting idea.
| gjm11 wrote:
| I am not 100% convinced by this. The matchup between their
| painting-based economic index (it's the first component from a
| PCA analysis, the data for each painting being a vector of pixel-
| counts for colours in each of 108 bins based on HSV) and GDP
| growth is pretty dubious, and in places where the two vary
| together the painting-based metric frequently changes several
| years _before_ the allegedly-corresponding change in GDP growth.
|
| They have ad hoc explanations for the divergences and try to make
| lemonade out of the lemons by claiming that their index reveals
| "higher-frequency fluctuations that traditional series smooth
| over" but I am willing to bet that if they had had to predict the
| divergences before doing the calculations they wouldn't have been
| able to.
|
| I think this is probably mostly pareidolia.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| The argument is not that the color index is a perfect replica
| of GDP, but that it is an independent, higher-frequency proxy
| for economic activity that captures dimensions missed by
| traditional reconstructions.
|
| The value of the index lies precisely where it converges with
| broad historical trends and where it diverges, suggesting new
| information. The observation that the color index frequently
| changes before GDP is a sign of its validity, not a weakness -
| e.g. shifting consumer demand/sentiment or supply chain shocks
| and a leading indicator of GDP
| a3w wrote:
| Also, color pigments might age differently.
|
| Is the image we see today really what was initially drawn?
|
| E.g. the famous night watch picture, which was larger and
| brighter.
| cnees wrote:
| I'm 0% convinced. You can tell from a color palate whether some
| wallpaper was from the 70's or 80's, but that tells you nothing
| about the economic conditions and everything about what colors
| were in style.
| oceanswimming wrote:
| Love it. I think time series views of these things on a site
| would be fun to watch or put on social media to spread this. Very
| cool. I appreciate the first citation. I'd vote film as the next
| medium of interest.
| oceanswimming wrote:
| Love it. I respect the first citation.
|
| I would vote to pursue film as the next medium. I would be
| interested in the predictive potential of your model.
|
| I am not certain this model will teach us a lot but it certainly
| gets one to think independently which is desperately needed to
| maintain our humanity.
|
| Thank you for sharing and publishing.
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