In September 1977 a 'Regional Science Symposium' was held at the Faculty
of Economics of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Organized because of the recent establishment at the Faculty of
Economics of a group that is engaged in teaching and research in the
field of regional science, the aim of the symposium was to make
university members more familiar with regional science and to introduce
the newly- created group to the national and international scene. Two
separate topics were selected, of potential interest to both re-
searchers and policy-makers. The first, spatial inequalities and
regional development, was chosen because of its central place in
regional science. Authors from several disciplines were asked to
approach this theme from a general, policy- orientated point of view.
This ensured the enlightenment of the various dimensions of spatial
inequality and its implications for regional policy. The results have
been collected in the volume Spatial Inequalities and Regional
Development. The second theme focused on spatial statistical analysis.
This branch of statistics is a relatively new one which receives growing
attention among researchers in the field of applied regional science.
The meeting on this topic concentrated on new results of research on the
use of appro- priate statistical and econometric methods for analyzing
spatial data. The papers concerned have been collected into another
volume, Explora- tory and Explanatory Statistical Analysis of Spatial
Data.
