ABSTRACT
One of the underrated topics in economics is the issue of scale and aggregation. To be more precise, in regional economics spatial scale and spatial aggregation is a neglected item. This statement might sound a little bit strange in a world where transportation economics, regional economics and urban economics are well-established fields. However, it is our belief that in defining an observation set in order to understand the arrangement of spatial patterns and structures economists are poorly equipped. Economists have devoted more attention to the scale of time than to the scale of space. In addition, what has been done in the field of space is often general and abstract, not connected to an explicit observation set in time and space. Finally, it is our perception that in economic theory time scales and spatial scales are not tied, making the choice for a macro, meso or microeconomic theory a rather arbitrary process.
