A long-standing tradition presents economic activity in terms of the flow of fluids. This metaphor lies behind a small but influential practice of hydraulic modelling in economics. Yet turning the metaphor into a three-dimensional hydraulic model of the economic system entails making numerous...

The apparent gulf between the pronouncements of the methodology of economics literature and the work of economists in their applied and empirical domains has created a position in which economic methodologists can blithely use the phrase: ‘testing theories by confronting them with data’ and...