Our approach to Impact

Impacting on the analysis of social and economic problems

Spatial econometrics provides methods and models which explicitly account for spatial fixity and specific characters of individual observation units (such as firms, regions/countries or households), together with dependencies between the units in a geographical or economic or socio-cultural space. We believe that gaining a better understanding of spatial specificity and interaction/ spill-over effects is an important step towards analysing any economic, social or spatial problem. In particular, this applies to econometric policy evaluations where externalities and spatial transmission of economic shocks are often of special interest (e.g. in housing and urban economics, health economics, macroeconomics and the economics of networks).

Impacting on policy

The Centre hopes to engender significant economic and social benefits for the wider society as research within the area continues to make a valuable contribution to policy evaluations and decisions. Currently, spatial research actively informs policy along several domains (e.g., monetary policy, housing, urban and regional policies), and further policy relevant application areas are envisaged.

Improving access to information

The SEEC discussion paper series will provide a unified resource for current research within the area, including both theoretical work and applications.

Another crucial element of our work is to promote the widespread use of spatial economics and econometrics by developing publicly available, user-friendly software routines in STATA and R which allow practitioners to make use of recently developed, spatial cross-section and spatial panel methods.

Recent examples of our impact

These include:

  • Connections with the European Central Bank and Norges Bank on spatial spillovers and cross-country transmission of shocks;
  • Research on UK mortgage arrears and possessions contributed to the evidence base for the Department for Communities and Local Government; and
  • Expert econometric evidence provided to the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia