A simultaneous spatial autoregressive model for compositional data

Résumé

In an election, the vote shares by party on a given subdivision of a territory form a vector with positive components adding up to 1 called a composition. Using a conventional multiple linear regression model to explain this vector by some factors is not adapted for at least two reasons: the existence of the constraint on the sum of the components and the assumption of statistical independence across territorial units questionable due to potential spatial autocorrelation. We develop a simultaneous spatial autoregressive model for compositional data which allows for both spatial correlation and correlations across equations. We propose an estimation method based on two-stage and three-stage least squares. We illustrate the method with simulations and with a data set from the 2015 French departmental election.