space and growth: a survey of empirical evidence ... - ResearchGate

Région et Développement 354. CONCLUSIONWe have reviewed the spatial econometrics literature on growth, andrelated it to the treatment of space in the broader empirical literature. In order tostructure the discussion, we have made a distinction between models of absoluteand relative location, where the former refers to the impact of being located at aparticular point in space, while the latter refers to the effect of being locatedcloser or further away from other specific countries or regions. This distinction isalso strongly related to a classification made in spatial econometrics betweenspatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence. While spatial heterogeneity isgenerally a function of absolute location, spatial dependence is always a functionof relative location.We have argued that while the spatial econometrics literature hasconcentrated on models of relative location (or spatial dependence), the nonspatialeconometrics literature has focused on models of absolute location (orspatial heterogeneity). These two approaches are complementary, and the spatialeconometrics literature would benefit from considering more carefully theunderlying reasons for spatial dependence, while the non-spatial econometricsliterature would benefit from testing for spatial dependence, since ignoring itcould result in biased coefficients. Moreover, we believe that the spatialeconometrics literature has unduly concentrated on methodological issues, andshould link its models and results more closely to theory.We have also considered several unresolved issues related to the spatialeconometric estimation of economic growth models. Regarding the specificationof spatial econometric models, we have discussed the difficulties inherent inspatial process models, and the alternative approaches that are available. Usingdirect representation models would dispense with some of the problems relatedto the construction of the spatial weights matrix. We have also discussed thetendency in spatial econometrics to focus almost entirely on the spatial lag andspatial error models, while avoiding other models that make the link to theorysomewhat more explicit. The literature would benefit from exploring thesemodels, since they provide new tools for modeling spatial effects in the contextof growth. Finally, we have discussed several problems resulting fromaggregation of the data used in most empirical growth analyses, and suggestedpossible solutions and directions for further research.