Introducing COST Action IS1104 “The EU in the new complex geography of economic systems: models, tools and policy evaluation”

Spatial statistics and econometrics include techniques and methods to model spatial data taking into account interaction (spatial spillover) effects and spatial heterogeneity. It is an active and fast growing area of research, spurred by the increasing availability of spatial data, i.e. geo-referenced data. These techniques, many of which are still in their early development, use different analytic approaches and are applied in fields as different as economics, sociology, and geology. This four-day Training School aims at getting acquaintance with the techniques of spatial statistics and econometrics, along with the main issues posed by the statistical treatment of geo-referenced data and by the construction and estimation of spatial econometric models. Students participating in the Training School will gain an up-to-date and accessible overview of the relevant theory as well as exposure to empirical applications in economics. All the lectures will share a hand-on approach, showing how to use statistical software (R) to analyze real-world cases. The ideal candidates for the Training School are Ph.D. students, Master students, post-doctoral fellows, and researchers in economics, sociology and statistics interested in the analysis of spatial data with particular reference to new economic geography and regional growth applications.