Dynamic systems modelling of the North-west region: 1. Spatio - temporal representation and identification

This is the first of four papers which will be published in close sequence in this journal. It examines the major previous attempts at constructing dynamic models of the region, and develops from these an abstract system representation of the spatio - temporal autocorrelation structure of the regional system. This leads to an adaptive spatial-distributed-lag policy model which is applied to the North-west region. The resulting representation is shown to be capable of capturing the temporal and spatial multipliers which govern regional economic evolution. The conditions under which the structure can be identified and its parameters estimated are also discussed.