In this paper a comparison of two concepts of neighbourhoods of spatial areas—physical and socio-economical—is presented. The former usually concerns their location on an administrative map and a possible community of borders, the latter—a similarity in terms of a composite social or...

We consider the incidental parameters problem in this paper, i.e. the estimation for a small number of parameters of interest in the presence of a large number of nuisance parameters. By assuming that the observations are taken from a multiple strictly stationary process, the two estimation...

We consider using the J-test procedure for the non-nested model selection problem between the spatial autoregressive (SAR) model and the matrix exponential spatial specification (MESS) model. The 2SLS and GMM methods are used to implement the J-test procedure and derive several test statistics...

In this paper, we consider the Cox-type tests of non-nested hypotheses for spatial autoregressive (SAR) models with SAR disturbances. We formally derive the asymptotic distributions of the test statistics. In contrast to regression models, we show that the Cox-type and J-type tests for...

We develop an unified model embedding different behavioral mechanisms of social interactions and design a statistical model selection test to discriminate between them in empirical applications. This framework is applied to study peer effects in education and delinquent behavior for adolescents...

We analyze peer e¤ects in sleeping behavior using a representative sample of U.S. teenagers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. The sampling design of the survey causes the conventional 2SLS estimator to be inconsistent. We extend the NLS estimator in Wang and Lee...

Decentralization of government with property tax financing is the standard recipe for public sector reform. Fiscal competition is assumed to stimulate efficiency and hold down the tax level. Property taxation offers additional incentives for efficiency. We study the incentive mechanisms involved...