Spatial Econometrics

Abstract

Spatial econometrics is the branch of scientific knowledge which studies empirically the geographical aspects of economic relationships. The interest in the discipline has increased sharply recently with an explosion of papers published and of applied disciplines interested. Spatial econometrics has been affected by the big data revolution both in terms of the volume (see “Big Data Volume”) and the velocity with which spatial data are now available. The computational problems emerging with the use of spatial big data are of great concern in the scientific community. Apart from a large number of attempts to simplify computationally the estimation of the existing models, the most recent literature has concentrated on the specification of alternative models that are computationally simpler. Under the impulse of the increased availability of spatial big data, the standard methods are currently challenged to find new solutions through the contamination with techniques developed in other fields of spatial analysis (see “Spatial Analytics”).