This volume is in honour of the remarkable career of the Father of Spatial Econometrics, Professor Jean Paelinck, presently of the Tinbergen Institute, Rotterdam. Jean Paelinck, arguably, is the founder of modern spatial econometrics. The impact on the profession through his work in spatial econometrics, regional science, and more conventional economics can be measured in many ways: through the work of his students, his devotion to and activism in facilitating the diffusion of regional science to Poland, the formulation and development of his FLEUR model, his co-founding of the French-speaking Regional Science Association, the voluminous references to his scholarly publications, his many invitations to be a featured speaker at conferences and universities throughout the world, the offices he has held in scholarly and professional associations, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Netherlands Economic Institute, and the numerous honorary degrees he has been awarded. A series of special sessions in honour of Jean Paelinck were organized at the most prominent regional science meetings around the world. A number of prominent scholars in the field organized and participated in special sessions labelled In Honour of Professor Paelinck.' These sessions reflect a truly global reach of the techniques and methods pioneered by him. As an outgrowth of six conferences final versions of the selection of papers are collected in this volume. Prominent ideas contained in each of the selected contributions can be traced explicitly to work by Jean Paelinck.

The purpose of models is not to fit the data but to sharpen the questions. S. Karlin, 11th R. A. Fisher Memorial Lecture, Royal Society, 20 April 1983 We are proud to offer this volume in honour of the remarkable career of the Father of Spatial Econometrics, Professor Jean Paelinck, presently of the Tinbergen Institute, Rotterdam. Not one to model solely for the sake of modelling, the above quotation nicely captures Professor Paelinck's unceasing quest for the best question for which an answer is needed. His FLEUR model has sharpened many spatial economics and spatial econometrics questions! Jean Paelinck, arguably, is the founder of modem spatial econometrics, penning the seminal introductory monograph on this topic, Spatial Econometrics, with Klaassen in 1979. In the General Address to the Dutch Statistical Association, on May 2, 1974, in Tilburg, "he coined the term [spatial econometrics] to designate a growing body of the regional science literature that dealt primarily with estimation and testing problems encountered in the implementation of multiregional econometric models" (Anselin, 1988, p. 7); he already had introduced this idea in his introductory report to the 1966 Annual Meeting of the Association de Science Regionale de Langue Fran~aise.