Spatial analysis of high-tech exports with geographically weighted regression

The development of High-Technology Exports (HTE) contributes to the increase of competitiveness and growth in national production, the development of commercial and economic cooperation with foreign countries, and the diversification of the economy. In addition, high technology exports reduce the current account deficit of the country's economy. Therefore, high-tech industries have become indispensable for economic development in a country. The aim of this study is to examine the existence of spatial (neighbourhood) relations of countries in high-technology exports. In this study, Exploratory Regression analysis was applied to determine the model that best explains HTE among the variables. Moran Index was used for spatial autocorrelation, Geographical Weighted Regression (GWR) method for spatial regression analysis, and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method, to compare with the GWR method. The GWR model established in this study showed that countries have a weak or strong spatial relationship with their neighboring countries in terms of HTE. It has been observed that this spatial relationship is strong in the countries neighboring China, which ranks first in HTE, while the spatial relationship is weak in countries where HTE is low.