Spatial Correlation Analysis: Geographic and Economic Perspectives

The present study identifies two distinct forms of spatial correlation, namely 'geographic' and 'economic' correlation. The former is operationalized through the selection of two weight matrices, specifically the 'geographic' adjacency matrix w1, which is a binary variable indicating whether cities are adjacent or not, and the 'geographical' distance weight matrix w2, which is derived from the spherical distance between city centers as determined by their respective longitude and latitude coordinates. The latter, on the other hand, is represented by a matrix of 'economic' distance weights, which are calculated based on average GDP per capita data spanning the period from 2011 to 2019.