In any economic analysis, regions or municipalities should not be regarded as isolated spatial units, but rather as highly interrelated small open economies. These spatial interrelations must be considered also when the aim is to forecast economic variables. For example, policy makers need...

Empirical assessments of the forecasting power of spatial panel data econometric models are still scarcely available. Moreover, several methodological contributions rely on simulated data to showcase the potential of proposed methods. While simulations may be useful to evaluate the properties of...

Empirical assessments of the forecasting power of spatial panel data econometric models are still scarcely available. Moreover, several methodological contributions rely on simulated data to showcase the potential of proposed methods. While simulations are obviously useful to evaluate the...

This paper studies the determinants of local tax rates. For the two main local taxes in Spain - the property tax and the motor vehicle tax - we test the existence of tax mimicking, yardstick competition and political trends in a sample of 2,713 municipalities. Using different spatial models, the...

The analysis of complex networks has recently received considerable attention. The work by Albert and Barabási presented a research challenge to network analysis, that is, growth of the network. The present paper offers a network analysis of the spatial commuting network in Germany. First, we...