Spatial Econometric Methods in Agricultural Economics Using R

Modern tools, such as GIS and remote sensing, are increasingly used in the monitoring of agricultural resources. The developments in GIS technology offer growing opportunities to agricultural economics analysts dealing with large and detailed spatial databases, allowing them to combine spatial information from different sources and to produce different models. The availability of these valuable sources of information makes the advanced models suggested in the spatial statistic and econometric literature applicable to agricultural economics.

This book aims at supporting stakeholders to design spatial surveys for agricultural data and/or to analyse the geographically collected data.

This book attempts to describe the main typology of agricultural data and the most appropriate methods for the analysis, together with a detailed description of the available data sources and their collection methods. Topics such as spatial interpolation, point patterns, spatial autocorrelation, survey data analysis, small area estimation, regional data modelling, and spatial econometrics techniques are covered jointly with issues arising from the integration of several data types.

The theory of spatial methods is complemented by real and/or simulated examples implemented through the open-source software R.

Paolo Postiglione is a professor of Economic Statistics at University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. He received a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Chieti-Pescara in 1998. From 1996 to 2001, he was a statistical executive at Ministry of Transports and Navigation and head of Human Resources. His current research interests focus on spatial statistics and econometrics, regional economic convergence, models for spatial non-stationary data, spatial sampling, and agricultural statistics.

Roberto Benedetti is a professor of Economic Statistics at University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. He obtained his Ph.D. in Methodological Statistics in 1994 from La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. From 1989 - 1994, he was employed at Telespazio S.p.A., one of the world’s leading companies in satellite services and telecommunications, working on remotely sensed data. From 1994-2001, he was a research director and head of the Agricultural Statistical Service at the Italian National Statistical Office. Since 2001, he has been employed as a professor of Economic Statistics at the University of Chieti-Pescara. He is currently the chairman of the graduate program in economics and business at the University of Chieti-Pescara. His current research interests focus on agricultural statistics, sample design, small area estimation, and spatial data analysis.

Federica Piersimoni is a senior researcher with the Agricultural Statistics Service at the Italian National Statistical Institute. In 1999, she received a Specialization Degree in Operational Research and Decision Theory from the University of Rome La Sapienza and received a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Chieti-Pescara in 2014. Her main research interests concern disclosure control, and sample design.