Economic models as theoretical cases

While some people wonder why analyze the models for which assumptions are known to be false, the economists believe that they can learn a lot in that way. The article shows that the knowledge that academic economists have gained largely related to concrete cases and not with rules. Economists often do not offer general rules or theories which should be compared with empirical data, but they analyze models that are ?special theoreticall cases?, and which help the understanding of economic problems, by describing analogies between the the problem and economic models. Economic models, empirical data, experimental results, and other sources of knowledge have the same epistemological status at economists, because they provide the cases with which they can compare the specific of economic problems.