This introduction summarizes the main contributions of the papers selected to be published in this special issue. These papers were presented (among others) in the Fourth Seminar Jean Paelinck hold in Oviedo (Spain) in 2010 and their quality justified the edition of this Special Issue. As members of the organizing committee, we are pleased with the results of this Seminar which it is considered as a reference in the spatial econometric field.
This special issue consists of two types of contributions. On the one hand, papers focus on the development of new methodologies linked to the concept of causality in spatial econometrics and, on the other hand, applied contributions where different economic problems are analyzed from a spatial or spatio-temporal perspective.