Università Roma Tre

The course aims to introduce the students to the study of how space affects economic activities and behaviours, with the aim of understanding whether space and place affect, economic, social, urban, and ecological processes using basic geographic characteristics like distance, adjacency, and physical character.
During the course we will analyse the wide range of spatial data (which are those encompassing a geographical component), and methodologies used in economics. The course will deliver the practical skills required for using this data and provide showcase applications in different fields of economic research (e.g., environment, development, urban and regional economics). We will review economic research that use geospatial data to obtain an understanding of the relevance of this approach across different fields. The goal is to learn how to manipulate and visualise geospatial data, and how to generate output in the form of maps or features for use in economic analysis. Through hands-on exercises, the course aims to provide the necessary skills to replicate these approaches and implement basic concepts of spatial economic models. By the end of the course students are expected to being able to identify (and answer to) their own research questions involving some form of spatial data.