Macroeconomic theories of growth and wealth distribution have an outsized influence on national and international social and economic policy. Yet, due to a relative lack of reliable, system wide data, many such theories remain, at best, unvalidated and, at worst, misleading. In this paper, we introduce a novel economic observatory and framework for high resolution comparison and assessment of the distributional impact of economic development through remote sensing of the earth's surface. Striking visual and empirical validation is observed for broad macroeconomic sigma-convergence in the period immediately following the end of the Cold war as well as strong global divergence dynamics immediately following the financial crisis and Great Recession, the rise of China, the decline of U.S. manufacturing, the euro crisis, Arab Spring, and Middle East conflicts.
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