The picture that can be seen at the URL below is a composite image of earth taken from outer space and showing by inference where the main economies of the people of earth are located.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0208/earthlights02_dmsp.jpg

That's interesting, albeit not surprising!

I find interesting the swath through Russia, the absence of light in central Austrailia, the light from Pudhoe Bay Alaska, the bright light form Hawaii. India, Asia and the US were not a surprise to me.

Central Australia- The outback. no one lives there.

It's not the economy, it's the light. Correlated though.

Yes, it is light, but resulting from the locations where the worlds economy abounds. Yes, there are places like the Outback where few live, and I would dare say that there is little or no economic activity. It could also be considered as a map of the distribuition of the earth's population (density). In any case regardless of how one wants to look at the composite picture, it provides an interesting view.

It would also be interesting to see how things have changed over the last 20 years or so years, but that image does not exist as far as I know.