The term “spatial econometrics” was introduced for the first time by the Belgian economist Jean Paelinck (universally recognised as the father of the discipline) in the general address he delivered to the annual meeting of the Dutch Statistical Association in May 1974 (Paelinck and Klaassen, 1979).
In general, econometrics differs from other branches of statistics in focusing on theoretical models, whose parameters are estimated using regression analysis.
Spatial econometrics is a refinement of this, where either the theoretical model involves interactions between different entities, or the data observations are not truly independent.
Recent developments tend to include also methods and models from social network econometrics.
The first general text in the field was the 1979 book by Paelinck and Klaasen.