Spatial representation of economic and financial measures used in agriculture via wavelet analysis

A foundation is set forth for use of the wavelet transform as a spatial analysis tool for modelling the geographical representation of economic and financial measures used in agriculture. This provides a framework from which to estimate a smooth nonparametric function which describes complex, multivariate relationships embedded in spatial data, with the resulting maps conveying large amounts of information in a familiar format. We illustrate this approach for tasks which include the graphical presentation of information, density estimation and wavelet-based nonparametric regression. A redundant wavelet transform is used, and we detail the properties which make it particularly appropriate for these objectives.