effects of MAUP on spatial econometrics models

The modifiable areal unit problem refers to the modifications of any statistical analysis when changing the scale of observation (e.g. from region to countries) or the aggregation criterion (e.g. different partitions of one country at a given scale). In a previous work (Arbia in Spatial data configuration in the statistical analysis of regional economics and related problems, Kluwer, Dordrecht 1989), we analyzed the effects of the modifiable areal unit problem on statistical analysis without referring to any specific random field. The quoted work concentrated on the modification of the first and second order properties of a random field. In this paper we reanalyse the same problem by looking specifically at the effects of MAUP on linear spatial econometric models looking in particular at the SARAR (1,1) model.