Duque, J.C., ArtÃs, M. and Ramos, R. (2006), "The ecological fallacy in a time series context: Evidence from Spanish regional unemployment rates", Journal of Geographical Systems, 8: 391 - 410.
Abstract: The ecological fallacy (EF) is a common problem regional scientists have to
deal with when using aggregated data in their analyses. Although there is a
wide number of studies considering different aspects of this problem, little
attention has been paid to the potential negative effects of the EF in a time
series context. Using Spanish regional unemployment data, this paper shows
that EF effects are not only observed at the cross-section level, but also in
a time series framework. The empirical evidence obtained shows that analytical
regional configurations are the least susceptible to time effects relative to
both normative and random regional configurations, while normative
configurations are an improvement over random ones.
