<Para ID="Par1">This paper analyzes the conditional <InlineEquation ID="IEq1"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$$\beta $$</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"> <math xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <mi mathvariant="italic">β</mi> </math> </EquationSource> </InlineEquation>-convergence hypothesis for NUTS 3 Italian provinces. A methodology for the simultaneous treatment of spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity is developed. Spatial dependence is introduced in the economic model by assuming a spatial...</equationsource></equationsource></inlineequation></para>

The hypothesis of homoscedasticity of errors is convenient for the simplification of the estimation procedures. Unfortunately, this assumption is rather restrictive in the case of the analysis of spatially distributed data. Spatial units, in fact, can be very different in size and in other...