The empirical growth literature has usually ignored spatial interdependence among countries. This paper uses spatial econometrics to estimate a growth model in which a country's economic growth depends on the growth rate of its neighbors. The results show that spatial relationships are relevant for the entire sample of 98 economies, but when the sample is divided by continents the spatial dependence is not longer significant. Nonetheless, the relevance of spatial effects is recovered when levels of income instead of rates of growth are considered.
