The inclusion of spatial analytical functionality in general and spatial data analysis in particular in a GIS environment has evolved considerably during the past decades. This started with early efforts during the late 1980s, primarily in academia. Those early implementations linked commercial GIS to commercial statistical software, using various methods of loose and close coupling. Most of th...

In “Economics and Reality” (1997) Tony Lawson advocates a perspective on social reality labelled critical realism. Critical realism maintains that strict regularities between observable events are the exception rather than the rule in the social world. This is a negative argument for econometrics which is seen to rely on the identification of such regularities. By contrast, the notion of explan...

A key issue for many countries and even for international organizations including "The World Bank" and "The United Nations" is how to attack poverty. In many countries of the world, millions of people are hungry, lacking shelter and clothing, sick and uncared for, illiterate and not schooled. These, all cause to reduce efficiency and productivity of labor, and hence decrease income. Also, being...