March 18, 2013, at 10 am, Department of Applied Economics invited Dr. Valerien O. Pede, a scientist from the Social Sciences Division of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to give an academic reports entitled: "Spatial Econometrics: Overview and some Applications".

Spatial Econometrics is a branch of econometrics. It studies how to deal with spatial interaction (spatial autocorrelation) and spatial structure (spatial inhomogeneity) structure analysis in the cross-sectional data and panel data regression model. The combination of spatial data analysis and modeling techniques with GIS is now widely used in the analysis of economic policy, especially real estate economy, environment and resources economy, the developmental economy and other fields. Dr. Pede explained the theory of spatial economics, and gave two cases, respectively, the growth of the U.S. economy and the Philippines rice to illustrate its applications from the macro and micro aspects.