A hitchhiker's view on spatial statistics and spatial econometrics for lattice data

Spatial statistics and spatial econometrics fill an impressive body of literature, clearly demonstrating the importance of the corresponding methods. Though the two fields are being referred to in the same breath, they differ substantially as they pursue quite different objectives and hence exhibit different interpretations. In this article we shed some light on the nature and relevance of those to demonstrate how the models can be employed with three data examples in a regional context. The discussion covers models for continuous responses and count data, real data examples and Monte Carlo simulations.