Models of Spatial Competition: A Critical 2012–2018 Update

Abstract

This paper picks up from a literature and bibliometric review published in Papers in Regional Science (Biscaia and Mota, Models of Spatial Competition: A Critical Review. Papers in Regional Science, 9 (4), 851–871, 2013) and extends it for the most recent years. Our main goal is the analysis of the recent research on spatial competition models a la Hotelling. For that purpose, we conduct a bibliometric approach and attempt to review previews conclusions on the light of the new results. Additionally, we use social network analysis (SNA) to map the co-authorship in this research topic. Our exercise shows a large increase in the number of papers in the research field in recent decades, revealing also that the Asian authors gained prominence (at the expense of North American ones). We also observe that the most frequent theme were the adaptations of the Hotelling line toward the political spectrum, followed by the issues of network effects and social welfare. Finally, we observed that the co-authorship networks in the field evidence low density.