Estimating Linear Models with Spatially Distributed Data

Abstract

Sociologists study a wide variety of social, political, and economic phenomena. Many of these phenomena-for example, urbanization, political mobilization, economic development, diffusion of innovations-take place in and are distributed across geographical space. It is reasonable, therefore, to argue that sociologists are interested, indeed have long been interested, in social phenomena distributed in geographical space. Yet, in the main, our theoretical frameworks and data-analytic capabilities do not include the geography of