Can Geographically Weighted Regressions Improve Regional Analysis and Policy Making?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Policy design in a regional context requires explicit recognition of spatial heterogeneity in community characteristics as well as in the heterogeneity of how these characteristics impact the target variables. By providing only a “global” measure for the entire space, standard approaches such as ordinary least squares or (most) spatial econometric models tend to compromise spatial heterogeneity in favor of average estimates and efficiency. More assessment is needed of whether the gains of simplicity and statistical efficiency offset the losses from ignoring spatial heterogeneity. Using data for about 1,900 rural Canadian communities as a backdrop, the authors address this issue using a geographically weighted regression approach. The authors find that for about two-thirds of the variables, standard approaches would have significantly understated the spatial differences in the impact of selected variables. Standard analysis would not have uncovered this information, suggesting that subsequent policy inferences would be poorly suited to many local settings.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.047 | 0.182 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".