In the spatial econometrics literature, spatial error dependence is characterized by spatial autoregressive processes, which relate every observation in the cross-section to any other with distance-decaying intensity: i.e., dependence obeys Tobler's First Law of Geography ('everything is related...

In many microeconometric models we use distances. For instance, in modelling the individual behavior in labor economics or in health studies, the distance from a relevant point of interest (such as a hospital or a workplace) is often used as a predictor in a regression framework. However, in...