Nighttime Must Read: Itzhak Gilboa et al.: Economic Models as Analogies

Itzhak Gilboa et al.:
Economic Models as Analogies:
"Why [do] economists analyze models...

...whose assumptions are known to be false[?]... Economists feel that they learn a great deal from such exercises.... Economists often analyze models that are 'theoretical cases', which help understand economic problems by drawing analogies between the model and the problem.... Models... data, experimental results, and other sources of knowledge... all provide cases to which a given problem can be compared. We offer complexity arguments that explain why case-based reasoning may sometimes be the method of choice and why economists prefer simple cases...