ERSA Summer School 2020
Regions in transition, what implications for tourism and manufacturing?
14-19 June 2020, University of Lausanne – Sion site,  Switzerland

The European Regional Science Association is pleased to announce in collaboration with The tourism research group of the Institute of Geography and Sustainability (University of Lausanne) the 33rd ERSA Summer School which will be held  from 15 June to 19 June 2020 at the University Campus of Sion, Switzerland

The summer school programme will feature the theme “Regions in transition, what implications for tourism and manufacturing?”.

ERSA Summer School aims to gather young researchers (PhD and post-doctoral students) from Europe with direct training in regional science. Sustainability transition is a new significant challenge for regional science with several issues, needs, opportunities but also threats for regions specialized in tourism or/and manufacturing. Production, innovation and consumption systems, labour markets, transport and mobility are just few examples of elements that are evolving face to this challenge. Therefore, this year’s edition of ERSA Summer School intends to focus on the most relevant concepts as well as analytical models and frameworks to be able to understand implications of transition for tourism and manufacturing.

Within this umbrella, the ERSA Summer School 2020 will particularly address the interaction between empirical, theoretical and policy analysis related to the following classic topics of regional science:
– Regional and urban development, labour markets, policy and governance;
– Regional competitiveness, innovation and productivity;
– Change in location of economic activity;
– Segregation, social, environmental and spatial inequalities;
– Transport, land use and accessibility;
– Population, migration and mobility behaviour;
– Regional finance, fiscal issues, investment or capital markets.

The Summer School will be organised in an intense week of lectures and participants presentations. The pedagogical approach is structured in four moments:

1. Young researchers sessions which are devoted to doctoral and post-doctoral students’ presentations of their work to participants and senior researchers (professors and lecturer).
2. During the morning ex-cathedra lectures are offered by invited Professors. Lectures cover a large variety of issues regarding to recent advances in theory and applications in regional science especially in the particular umbrella theme of the School. They will be structured in four categories of lectures. The first is the “ERSA Award 2019 Lecture” given by Philip McCann – the lecture will be followed in the evening by a Master class given in a relaxed atmosphere where he will talk about his research itinerary. The second category “Hot topic Lectures” will be conducted by confirmed senior scholars from Europe with high reputation on the topic of the Summer School: Marie Delaplace (to be confirmed) from University of Marne-la-Vallée (France), Alessandra Faggian from Gran Sasso Science Institute (Italy), João Romão from University of Algarve (Portugal), Bernhard Truffer University of Bern (Switzerland). The third category, “Regional Science fundamental Lecture”, will address classical themes of regional science. It will be given by Olivier Crevoisier from University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). The fourth and last category consists in a “Methodological workshop” that will be given by Céline Rozenblat from University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Attention has been paid to gender and regional balance when building the program.
3. A field visit is organised.
4. Great importance is given to informal discussions, which are precious ground for experience sharing and network expanding. Within participants but most of all with invited Professors who are asked to stay a few days precisely for that purpose. The organisation aims at creating moments for get-together activities (shared meals, field visits, get-together dinner, thematic walks, serious game session, etc.).

Link to the Summer School website

17th PRSCO Summer Institute 

29-31 July, 2020, RMIT University, Vietnam

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Pacific Regional Science Conference Organization (PRSCO), the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) and RMIT University are pleased to invite you to submit your papers to the 17th PRSCO Summer Institute. The conference will be held from 29-31 July, 2020 at RMIT University in Vietnam. The theme of the conference is “Emerging Technologies in Regional Development”.

The topics of the conference include, but not limited to:

• Blockchain Solutions in Regional Development
• Logistics, supply chain and regional development
• Big Data in regional science
• Emerging challenges for regional development
• Vision and management of sustainable cities
• Energy, development, and sustainability
• Rural and local development
• Accessibility, infrastructure and regional economic growth
• Social capital and regional development
• Agglomeration, clusters, congestion and policy
• Globalization and regional competitiveness
• Migration, cultural networks and regional development
• Social segregation, poverty and social policy
• Climate change and sustainable regional development
• Innovation, knowledge economy and regional development
• Geographical information science and spatial analysis
• Spatial econometrics
• New frontiers in regional science: theory and methodology
• Infrastructure, transportation and communication
• Land use, real estate and housing markets
• Tourism, cultural industries and regional development
• Logistics, supply chain and regional development
• Urban governance and cities regeneration
• City systems and systems of cities
• Advances in I-O and CGE modelling
• Food security
• Global cities
• Southeast Asian regional economic integration

Special Issue

Best papers at the conference will be invited to submit to a special issue in Regional Science Policy & Practice (indexed in SCOPUS and Web of Science). All invited papers will go through the journal’s normal peer review process.

Key Dates:

• Deadline for Abstract Submission: 1 March 2020
• Notification of Paper Acceptance: 25 March 2020
• Deadline for Full Paper Submission: 25 April 2020
• Registration Deadline: 9 May 2020
• Conference: July 29-31, 2020

Submission Instructions:

Presenters are invited to submit an electronic copy (either Microsoft Word or PDF) of their papers (in English) with the file names labelled as the presentation title. Papers must be submitted by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.(link sends e-mail).

All submissions will go through a double-blind peer review process and all presenters are expected to discuss a paper and/or chair a session. 

All information at: https://www.rmit.edu.vn/17th-prsco-summer-institute

The 3rd Annual Intensive Course Program in Urban, Transport, and Environmental Economics

Jan 13 - Feb 7, 2020

Faculty of Economics and Business, UI Depok

For more information: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will host the 13th annual Midwest Graduate Student Summit on Applied Economics, Regional and Urban Studies (AERUS) on April 24th – 26th, 2020.

In addition to giving participants the occasion to present their research and receive feedback, this year’s meeting will feature 2 workshops targeted to graduate students, 2 faculty panels on system dynamics and 2 keynote speakers on regional economic systems. 

Workshops:

• Machine learning and big data. Prof. Zhenhua Chen (The Ohio State University).
• Job market season. What to expect? Prof. William Ridley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). 

Keynote speakers:

• Christa Court,  Assistant Professor and Director of the Economic Impact Analysis Program, Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida. Christa specializes in regional economic modeling, the energy-water nexus, applied spatial econometrics, environmental accounting, and connections in human and natural systems.
• Zhenhua Chen, Assistant Professor, City and Regional Planning Department, The Ohio State University. His research interests include economic impact assessments of infrastructure investment, disasters and resilience using machine learning, Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models and big data analytics.

Faculty panel:

• Mark Brown, Statistics, Canada
• Sandy Dall’erba, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
• Brian Deal, Dept. of Landscape Architecture
• Monica Haddad, Dept. of Community and Regional Planning (Iowa State University)
• Maria Chu Librada, Dept. of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
• Bo Li, Dept. of Statistics
• Nicolas Federico Martin, Dept. of Crop Sciences
• William Ridley, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
• Yilan Xu, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics

The summit is designed to initiate intellectual dialogue on wide array of research areas and spur future research collaborations among participating young scholars. Work at any stage will be accepted, including completed research, research in progress, and research idea/proposal.

Conference presentations address a variety of areas of growing importance to regional scientists, economists, planners, and geographers. Participants are encouraged to submit a proposal on subjects related to the conference themes: Regional Science, Urban Economics, Labor Economics, Economic Geography, Environmental Economics, Resource Geography, Energy Economics, Health Economics, Housing and Real Estate, Development Economics, Spatial Econometric, Computable General Equilibrium, Agent-Based Modeling, Input-Output Analysis. 

 Participants have to send their abstracts (300 words max), by March 15th, 2020.

For register and submitting abstracts please visit  http://aerus2020.web.illinois.edu/ 

Registration fee will be $60, includes 2 workshops, 2 breakfast, 2 coffee-breaks, 2 lunches and a dinner Saturday night.

Please direct your questions or concerns to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Looking forward seeing you here!

 Local organizing committee

AERUS 2020

This event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

RSAI NURTURING YOUNG SCIENTIFIC TALENTS WORKSHOP

New Methods in Regional Science:

Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics

• Coordinators of the project:
  • Abdellatif Khattabi (AMSR) et
  • Karim El Aynaoui (UM6P)

• Scientific Committee:
  • Andrea Caragliu
  • Eduardo Haddad
  • Jean-Claude Thill
  • Karima Kourtit
  • Lakshmi Sivaramakrishnan
  • Peter Nijkamp
  • Saad Badaoui
  • Said Lahssini
  • Sumona Banerjee
  • Tomaz Dentinho

• Organizing Committee:
  • Erdogan H. Ekiz
  • Hicham Mharzi Alaoui
  • Said Lahssini
• Duration:  2 days: May 31 – June 1, 2020
• Venue/Location: UM6P, Benguerir, Morocco (close to Marrakech)
• Expected participants: 20-25 young scientists

The volume of available data for research and policy has more than doubled in the past decade and shows an exponential growth. This new situation is also creating unexpected opportunities for regional science research. In order to seize such opportunities and examine the changing complexity of data structures and volumes, traditional methods in regional science need to be re-thought and re-designed. Data science brings innovative methods, information processes, complex algorithms and new digital systems, with the aim to harvest and extract knowledge from huge and big data using inter alia machine-learning and artificial intelligence techniques. Such techniques will be more than ever needed in modern regional science research. A presentation of such usual approaches will be given in a dedicated workshop in relation to the RSAI World Conference in Marrakech (Morocco).

This workshop will give an overview of methods, models and computational architectures related to the above topics. The workshop will involve lectures and practical sessions related to theory, tools and practices, case studies and student’s presentations. It will familiarize participants with new machine learning techniques, supervised and unsupervised learning, segmentation methods and deep learning. Participants will also gain experience in organizing data using traditional methods as well as more modern statistical and econometric approaches.

This two days’ workshop on “New Methods in Regional Science: Data science, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics”, meant for young scientists in Morocco and elsewhere in Africa and the whole world.  It will be organized by the Moroccan Regional Science Association (AMSR) and the University Mohamed 6 Polytechnic (UM6P), in close association with the RSAI World Congress that will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from June 2 – 5, 2020.

The workshop is offered to Master Students, PhD Candidates and early career researchers, with a view to enhancing their knowledge, their networking abilities, cooperation and start-up of their professional career. The meeting venue creates appropriate conditions, place and space to provide young scientists with a substantive training for their efficient and successful scientific career development, for the presentation of their new work, and for receiving feedback from inspiring senior scholars and from their peers.

The workshop’s organization cooperates with higher education institutions from Morocco and other countries. The workshop will create a multidisciplinary and multinational scientific environment and promises valuable scientific results in the form of new common research project proposals, publication outputs, support of young researchers, and development of scientific cooperation. Candidates have to apply for participation in this workshop.

The selection of participants for the workshop will be based on the quality of their applications.  Applications for the workshop should include an outline of the research interest and motivation of Master or PhD students; brief description of the presentation that will be delivered; institutional affiliation and current position; reference from the home institution. The plan is to nurture new talent of about 5 Master Students, 10 PhD candidates and 5 early career researchers.

POTENTIAL KEY SPEAKERS (TENTATIVE)

• Theory and practice
  • Jean-Claude Thill
  • Michael Goodchild (tbc)
  • Carlo de Weijer (tbc)
  • John Osth (tbc)
  • Laurie Schintler
  • Parvathy Krishnan
• Case studies:
  • Eduardo Haddad
  • Peter Nijkamp
  • Karima Kourtit
  • Thomaz Dentinho
  • Said Lahssini and Hicham Mharzi Alaoui
  • Saad Badaoui

More information at: http://amsr.ma/RSAI_NT/

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I would like to encourage you to submit your research and to spread the word about the 2 special sessions organised by the OECD Trento Centre jointly with partners.

1. S50. The spatial dimension of productivity for regional growth

Following the success of the last year special sessions on spatial productivity, the Spatial Productivity Lab at the OECD Trento Centre has partnered with the UK-based Productivity Insights Network to organise this year edition titled “The Spatial Dimension of Productivity for Regional Growth”. We are accepting submissions that tackle the issue of productivity from a regional/subnational perspective in a variety of contexts and under a range of angles. Please consider submitting your research and encourage others to do so!

1. S49. Competitiveness and sustainable growth across regional typologies

This special session seeks to focus on the issues of competitiveness and sustainable economic growth within certain types of regions. Research that focuses on the mountainous regions, thin economies, island economies, marginalised rural areas, etc. would fit well. To give a few examples outside of the traditional urban-rural delineation, in Italy, the areas of interest can be inner areas and the Italian South; in the US, counties within the ARC fall within this topic.

Please submit your research and encourage others to do so.

As the OECD Trento Centre is launching a new stream of work on sustainable economic mountain development, if any people working on this or closely related topics come to mind, please share the names with us, so we can draw from their expertise and to form a network of interested researchers.

Thank you and hope to see every one of you in Bolzano in August.

With kind regards,

Alexandra Tsvetkova | Economist/Policy Analyst
Trento Centre for Local Development || Spatial Productivity Lab

Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities

Call for Papers

Romanian Journal of Regional Science (rjrs.ase.ro)  invites contributions for the special issue entitled ”Uncovering territorial inequalities and spatial justice in the EU”, under the auspices of the Horizon 2020 project IMAJINE – Integrative Mechanisms for Addressing Spatial Justice  and Territorial Inequalities in Europe, with Ana Vinuela, University of Oviedo, Spain and Maria Plotnikova, Aberystwyth University, UK as Guest Editors.

The special issue is planned to be launched by mid-June, 2020. Submission deadline: April 12 at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The problem of territorial inequality is especially important for the EU. The European project has been a long-running process of the coming together of the European states into a single territorial unit. Territorial inequalities have long persisted in the EU. Following a period of convergence in the 1990s and early 2000s, the 2008 financial crisis had widened regional economic disparities in Europe. Territorial inequalities have been targets of policy intervention via regional policy and more recently, Cohesion policy with the objective to  promote more balanced and more sustainable territorial development.

Policy intervention is deemed necessary because territorial inequalities in economic performance may over-time lead to divergence in levels and trajectories of development among regions, preventing lagging regions from reaching their potential and necessitating fiscal transfers from richer ones. Territorial inequalities engender migration flows from poorer to richer regions contributing to cumulative causation behind the persistence of inequalities. Territorial inequalities in unemployment and health bring about clusters of multi-dimensional deprivation, increasing reliance on welfare disbursements and public provision of services.  Moreover perception of territorial inequalities in ‘lagging’ or ‘left-behind’ regions may foster what has been termed as the “geography of discontent” expressed in grass-roots movements, support for extreme political parties and anti-establishment voting behaviour (e.g. Brexit vote outcome in the UK). 

The perspective of spatial justice offers a new angle for analysing and ultimately tackling territorial inequality.  Inequalities may be understood as differences in opportunities available for individuals expressed through access to (e.g. education, jobs, healthcare, services, and, ultimately social mobility) that differ across space and where spacial differences in access interact with its socio-economic determinants such as class, gender, age, ethnicity and others.

Understanding territorial inequalities therefore requires greater attention to regional and local socio-economic contexts. Doing so brings to light the interrelationship between economic inequality and other location-specific factors such as differential capacity of regions and localities to sustain economic activity, absorb economic shocks and respond to policy intervention, including Cohesion policies.

We invite papers addressing the issues of territorial inequalities and conceptualization of spatial justice from any disciplinary area.

This event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

RSAI NURTURING YOUNG SCIENTIFIC TALENTS WORKSHOP

New Methods in Regional Science:

Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics

• Coordinators of the project:
  • Abdellatif Khattabi (AMSR) et
  • Karim El Aynaoui (UM6P)

• Scientific Committee:
  • Andrea Caragliu
  • Eduardo Haddad
  • Jean-Claude Thill
  • Karima Kourtit
  • Lakshmi Sivaramakrishnan
  • Peter Nijkamp
  • Saad Badaoui
  • Said Lahssini
  • Sumona Banerjee
  • Tomaz Dentinho

• Organizing Committee:
  • Erdogan H. Ekiz
  • Hicham Mharzi Alaoui
  • Said Lahssini
• Duration:  2 days: May 31 – June 1, 2020
• Venue/Location: UM6P, Benguerir, Morocco (close to Marrakech)
• Expected participants: 20-25 young scientists

The volume of available data for research and policy has more than doubled in the past decade and shows an exponential growth. This new situation is also creating unexpected opportunities for regional science research. In order to seize such opportunities and examine the changing complexity of data structures and volumes, traditional methods in regional science need to be re-thought and re-designed. Data science brings innovative methods, information processes, complex algorithms and new digital systems, with the aim to harvest and extract knowledge from huge and big data using inter alia machine-learning and artificial intelligence techniques. Such techniques will be more than ever needed in modern regional science research. A presentation of such usual approaches will be given in a dedicated workshop in relation to the RSAI World Conference in Marrakech (Morocco).

This workshop will give an overview of methods, models and computational architectures related to the above topics. The workshop will involve lectures and practical sessions related to theory, tools and practices, case studies and student’s presentations. It will familiarize participants with new machine learning techniques, supervised and unsupervised learning, segmentation methods and deep learning. Participants will also gain experience in organizing data using traditional methods as well as more modern statistical and econometric approaches.

This two days’ workshop on “New Methods in Regional Science: Data science, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics”, meant for young scientists in Morocco and elsewhere in Africa and the whole world.  It will be organized by the Moroccan Regional Science Association (AMSR) and the University Mohamed 6 Polytechnic (UM6P), in close association with the RSAI World Congress that will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from June 2 – 5, 2020.

The workshop is offered to Master Students, PhD Candidates and early career researchers, with a view to enhancing their knowledge, their networking abilities, cooperation and start-up of their professional career. The meeting venue creates appropriate conditions, place and space to provide young scientists with a substantive training for their efficient and successful scientific career development, for the presentation of their new work, and for receiving feedback from inspiring senior scholars and from their peers.

The workshop’s organization cooperates with higher education institutions from Morocco and other countries. The workshop will create a multidisciplinary and multinational scientific environment and promises valuable scientific results in the form of new common research project proposals, publication outputs, support of young researchers, and development of scientific cooperation. Candidates have to apply for participation in this workshop.

The selection of participants for the workshop will be based on the quality of their applications.  Applications for the workshop should include an outline of the research interest and motivation of Master or PhD students; brief description of the presentation that will be delivered; institutional affiliation and current position; reference from the home institution. The plan is to nurture new talent of about 5 Master Students, 10 PhD candidates and 5 early career researchers.

POTENTIAL KEY SPEAKERS (TENTATIVE)

• Theory and practice
  • Jean-Claude Thill
  • Michael Goodchild (tbc)
  • Carlo de Weijer (tbc)
  • John Osth (tbc)
  • Laurie Schintler
  • Parvathy Krishnan
• Case studies:
  • Eduardo Haddad
  • Peter Nijkamp
  • Karima Kourtit
  • Thomaz Dentinho
  • Said Lahssini and Hicham Mharzi Alaoui
  • Saad Badaoui

More information at: http://amsr.ma/RSAI_NT/

Mid-Continent Regional Science Association

51^st Annual Conference

IMPLAN 13^th Biennial National User’s Conference

~ June 3-5, 2020 ~ Bloomington, Minnesota ~

Call for Papers

The MCRSA will hold its 51st Annual Conference together with the IMPLAN 13th Biennial National User’s Conference June 3-5, 2020 at The Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport Mall of America Hotel in Bloomington, Minnesota. The hotel offers complimentary shuttle service to and from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport and is located near such attractions as the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the Mall of America, and the Twin Cities Light Rail transit system to take you anywhere in the metro area.

The program committee welcomes individual papers and organized sessions on a wide range of topics relating to applied economics, planning, geography, business, public administration, sociology, and political science.

The deadline for abstract submission is April 1, 2020.

Hotel Reservations:
The Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport Mall of America Hotel
3800 American Boulevard East · Bloomington, Minnesota 55425
Tel: 952-854-2100
Toll Free: 1-800-HILTONS
The conference room rate is $159 per night. The conference room rate will be honored three days before and after the conference. Onsite self-parking is complimentary for conference attendees. Complimentary shuttle service from and to the airport is available. To make a reservation, call  1-800-HILTONS and mention the Mid-Continent Regional Science Association (MCRSA) conference. You can reserve your room online by clicking here.

The cutoff date for the conference room rate is May 11, 2020

MCRSA Surcharge for Participants Not Staying at the Conference Hotel to Booking Outside the Conference Block

Note that attendees who do not register for an overnight stay at the conference hotel, The Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport Mall of America Hotel, or who book outside the conference room block, will incur an additional conference registration surcharge of $150. This surcharge does not apply to students or to attendees with a local business address, i.e. the Twin Cities area.

2020 M. Jarvin Emerson Student Paper Competition

The deadline for submission is April 1, 2020

The Mid-Continent Regional Science Association announces the Student Paper Competition for our 2020 conference (June 3-5) in Bloomington, Minnesota. All students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs as of January 1, 2020 are eligible. Student papers dealing with all aspects of regional development, including cultural, physical and economic processes, are welcome. The first place winner will receive $1,000 and the M. Jarvin Emerson Award. The winning entry will also be considered for publication in the Association’s journal, The Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy. Only papers authored solely by students (i.e., no faculty co-authored papers) will be eligible for the competition and resulting publication. Addition information can be found at http://mcrsa.org/student-paper-competition/

North Central Regional Center for Rural Development

Graduate Student Travel Grants to the MCRSA Conference 

The North Central Regional Center for Rural Development (NCRCRD) at Michigan State University is partnering with the MCRSA to strengthen research capacity in the North Central Region. We’re doing so by offering a limited number of MCRSA conference travel grants to graduate students from NCRCRD member institutions. Students can request up to $500 to pay eligible travel-related expenses. Only M.S. and Ph.D. graduate students from NCRCRD-member institutions are eligible for these awards.

Information about the MCRSA conference is at: 

http://mcrsa.org/conference/

NEW & EXPANDED in 2020!* Workshop:

Spatial Econometrics: Empirical Analysis of Geospatial Association and Cross-Unit Interdependence

Robert J. Franzese, Jr. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Do the outcomes in the units or individuals of your research analyses cluster geospatially or within networks? Do some units’ or individuals’ outcomes depend on outcomes in other units/individuals? That is, are the outcomes of interest in your studies likely contagious from units to neighboring or otherwise proximate or connected units? Do the processes you study diffuse across units in some manner? Are there spillovers across subjects? If you study anything in the social sciences, and likely most things beyond, almost certainly they are/do.

This NEW & EXPANDED!* workshop (July 20-24 in Ann Arbor) teaches empirical methods for modeling, for estimating, and for the interpretation of such spatial or cross-unit clustering or interdependence (a.k.a., contagion/diffusion/spillover/network-dependence...).

*Now with more intro to models and methods for spatial or geospatial clustering (as opposed to contagion/interdependence) and distinguishing between the alternate sources of spatial association (common exposure, contagion, network selection).

Applied (computer-lab) sessions and exercises are bilingual, i.e. with lab scripts in Stata and R both available, and students are of course welcome to use other software as they prefer.

Register through the ICPSR Summer School portal, linked here:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/sumprog

The course description from the ICPSR website is linked here & copied below:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/sumprog/courses/0129

Spatial Econometrics: Empirical Analysis of Geospatial Association and Cross-Unit Interdependence

20-24 July 2020

PLEASE DO EMAIL (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) with any & all questions

Description: Spatial (i.e., geospatial or otherwise cross-unit) association and interdependence are ubiquitous throughout the social sciences, and beyond. That is, events or outcomes in one observational unit are almost always related to similar occurrences in other observational units. This is so for such diverse phenomena as disturbances and conflicts within and among nations; crime, health, and environmental outcomes; economic and other policies in political jurisdictions; consumer, investor, and producer choices in markets; individuals’ opinions and behavior in societies; and voting by citizens in elections or by legislators in legislatures. In contexts where this omnipresent cross-unit association (or correlation) arises from interdependence (or contagion), "standard" statistical methods (which assume independent observations) are inappropriate, and design-based methods of "nonparametric causal-inference" are (at best) inadequate. This workshop introduces strategies appropriate for distinguishing spatial association from spatial interdependence and for proper estimation of processes involving interdependent observations, emphasizing spatial and spatiotemporal models of interdependent continuous and limited outcomes.

The main objective of the workshop is to demonstrate how such spatial, i.e. geo-spatial or otherwise cross-unit, interdependence can be incorporated into empirical analysis most productively. Course participants will learn how to: diagnose spatial-correlation patterns; estimate spatial-regression models; distinguish between different sources of spatial correlation (common exposure, contagion, and selection); and calculate and present the spatial and spatiotemporal effects that empirical models which incorporate interdependence imply. Methods to be covered include: measures of spatial association; models and methods for (exogenous) spatial correlation; instrumental-variable and maximum-likelihood estimators for models with (endogenous) spatial interdependence; multiple-spatial-lag models; spatial interdependence in models with limited and qualitative dependent-variables; and models for coevolutionary processes (i.e., processes with both spatial-cum-network interdependence and endogenous-connectivity/network-selection).

Prerequisites: None; in particular, although participants should be familiar with linear regression and models for qualitative/limited dependent variables (e.g., logit, probit, etc.), this workshop does not assume any prior knowledge of, or experience with, spatial statistics. Indeed, all necessary mathematical, statistical, geospatial-analytic, and spatial-econometric background will be reviewed as needed, albeit (obviously) very quickly.