The software for spatial econometrics available in the R system for statistical computing is reviewed. The methods are illustrated in a historical perspective, highlighting the main lines of development and employing historically relevant datasets in the examples. Estimators and tests for spatial cross-sectional and panel models based either on maximum likelihood or on generalized moments methods are presented. The paper is concluded reviewing some current active lines of research in spatial econometric software methods.

Despite the huge availability of software to estimate cross-sectional spatial models, there are only few functions to estimate models dealing with spatial limited dependent variable. This paper fills this gap introducing the new R package spldv. The package is based on generalized methods of moment (GMM) estimators and includes a series of one- and two-step estimators based on different choices of the weighting matrix for the moments conditions in the first step, and different estimators for the variance-covariance matrix of the estimated coefficients. An important feature of spldv is that users can estimate the spatial Durbin model and compute the direct, indirect, and total effects in a friendly and flexible way.