README.md

In andybega/wstates: Spatial Lagging for Country-Year Data

wstates

The goal of wcshapes is to make spatial lagging with country-year but also other panel data easier.

Note: this is still in very early stages. Use with caution.

Installation

To install the latest version from GitHub:

library("remotes")
install_github("andybega/wstates")

The package is not on CRAN.

Example

The core function spatlag() spatially lags variables in a country-year dataset. It is self-aware of the Gleditsch and Ward statelist and will construct spatial weights matrices using the time-appropriate set of independent states using shapefiles from the cshapes package.

First, let’s construct a panel dataset with a variable, x, that is 1 for a limited number of country-years. wstates is setup to work in conjunction with the states package, which generates country-year data matching the G\&W statelist using state_panel():

library("states")
library("wstates")
library("sf")
#> Linking to GEOS 3.7.2, GDAL 2.4.2, PROJ 5.2.0
library("ggplot2")

states <- state_panel(as.Date("2011-12-31"), as.Date("2012-12-31"), partial = "exact")
states <- subset(states, !states$gwcode %in% c(396, 397))
states$x <- as.integer(
  (states$gwcode %in% c(2, 260, 490) & states$date=="2011-12-31") |
  (states$gwcode %in% c(2) & states$date=="2012-12-31"))

And here is how to spatially lag x:

# spatial lag x
states$slag_x <- spatlag(states$x, states$gwcode, states$date)

# or, equivalently
states <- states %>%
  dplyr::mutate(slag_x = spatlag(x, gwcode, date))

A visual check that the lagging was correct:

# Add geometry to country-year data
states2011 <- states[states$date=="2011-12-31", ]
geom2011   <- read_cshapes(as.Date("2011-12-31"))
states2011 <- dplyr::left_join(states2011, geom2011, by = c("gwcode" = "GWCODE"))
states2011 <- states2011 %>% st_set_geometry("geometry")

plot(states2011[, c("x", "slag_x")])

Country-year W matrices

wstates() creates W matrices for the independent states at a given date. This is useful for visualizing the relationships.

# Get W matrix for certain date
w <- wstates("2010-01-01")
w
#> Spatial weights matrix [194 x 194]
#> Type: Contiguity (rook)
plot(w)

Types of weights matrices

I’ve been using (rook) contiguity for now during development, but the plan is to add more. Here’s one with power-weighted inverse distance:

data("est_adm1")

est_adm1$x <- as.integer(est_adm1$NAME_1 == "Harju")
w0 <- w_dist_power(st_geometry(est_adm1), alpha = .5)
w1 <- w_dist_power(st_geometry(est_adm1), alpha = 2)
w2 <- w_contiguity(st_geometry(est_adm1))
est_adm1$x_sl0 <- as.numeric(w0 %*% est_adm1$x)
est_adm1$x_sl1 <- as.numeric(w1 %*% est_adm1$x)
est_adm1$x_sl2 <- as.numeric(w2 %*% est_adm1$x)

plot(est_adm1[, c("x", "x_sl0", "x_sl1", "x_sl2")])

andybega/wstates documentation built on Nov. 2, 2019, 1:53 p.m.