This book shows how to model the spatial interactions between actors that are at the heart of the social sciences.

David Darmofal is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on spatial analysis and political geography and has appeared in a variety of journals including the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and Political Geography. He has received best article awards from the Journal of Politics and Political Research Quarterly. He teaches regularly in the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research.

Part I. General Topics: 1. The social sciences and spatial analysis; 2. Defining neighbors via a spatial weights matrix; 3. Spatial autocorrelation and statistical inference; 4. Diagnosing spatial dependence; 5. Diagnosing spatial dependence in the presence of covariates; 6. Spatial lag and spatial error models; 7. Spatial heterogeneity; Part II. Advanced Topics: 8. Time-series-cross-section (TSCS) and panel data models; 9. Advanced spatial models; 10. Conclusion; Part III. Appendices on Implementing Spatial Analyses: 11. Getting data ready for a spatial analysis; 12. Spatial software; 13. Web resources for spatial analysis; 14. Glossary.