Old, new, borrowed and BLUE: the twenty-first century spatial economic analysis toolkit

This paper takes a retrospective and prospective stance to assess the nature and breadth of research published in Spatial Economic Analysis over the past 20 years and to ask what comes next. We address two main questions. First, retrospectively, what does revealed preference, in terms of published papers, tell us about what is considered impactful, innovative and exciting spatial analysis research? Drawing on the corpus of published papers in the journal and reflecting on current trends, we identify the central methods and topics that have appeared and how both have evolved over time. Second, more speculatively, we discuss the ideal goals of contemporary spatial economic analysis research. We argue that where spatial analysis excels (and has always excelled?) is in its acquisitive and integrative nature.