Regional compositional trajectories and structural change: A spatiotemporal multivariate autoregressive framework

Compositional data, such as regional shares of economic sectors or property transactions, are central to understanding structural change in economic systems across space and time. This paper introduces a spatiotemporal multivariate autoregressive model tailored for panel data with composition-valued responses at each areal unit and time point. The proposed framework enables the joint modelling of temporal dynamics and spatial dependence under compositional constraints and is estimated via a quasi maximum likelihood approach. We build on recent theoretical advances to establish identifiability and asymptotic properties of the estimator when both the number of regions and time points grow. The utility and flexibility of the model are demonstrated through two applications: analysing property transaction compositions in an intra-city housing market (Berlin), and regional sectoral compositions in Spain's economy. These case studies highlight how the proposed framework captures key features of spatiotemporal economic processes that are often missed by conventional methods.