Their documentation is pretty comprehensive and they readily admit that much of the data, particularly of poorer countries, is of middling reliability.

From their documentation: “These data allow better integration of economic and environmental data to investigate environmental economics, the impact of global warming, and the role of geophysical factors in economic activity. On of the major results is to show that the true economic deserts of the globe are in Greenland, Antarctica, northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia.” I really have to wonder if the boonies of Canada are really less economically productive than the desert heart of the Sahara.

It’s a tough project to get right. Downloading the spreadsheet of underlying data and sorting the data by various criteria is a lot of fun.

And of courser, the more you examine the work, the more you realize that a lot of finessing had to go into painting a pretty picture.