Skip to content
Prev 25881 / 29559 Next

How to test spatial dependence in errorsarlm

On Mon, 14 Aug 2017, Javier Garc?a wrote:

            
There was some speculation that these tests might be used on an lm fit of 
the (I - \lambda W) y ~ (I - \lambda W) X model. These speculations have 
never been checked rigorously, so nobody knows whether they are of any 
value, probably not, and certainly we know nothing of their inferential 
basis.
You by definition fix X and W as known, exogeneous, quantities. If X (and 
functional forms) and/or W do not meet these requirements, there is little 
good guidance. It depends on what you want: predict house prices where 
they are not observed; estimate \beta values; estimate the impact of a 
unit change in an X variable on house prices (y); whatever. A best-fit 
model suggests that you want to predict, but isn't necessary for impacts 
or betas if you trust X (and its functional forms) and W.
See a good deal of work by Daniel McMillen on these issues.
This suggests that SLX or SDEM (see LeSage 2014 and SLX articles for a 
discussion) may address many of the issues of spatial autocorrelation by 
including (selected) WX. The Durbin versions of spdep functions do not 
(yet) let you choose which WX to include, always including all X - this is 
on my medium-term to-do list.

Roger