ABSTRACT
Literally, econometrics means "economic measurement." Therefore, national income accounting and other forms of economic data such as consumer confidence indexes and the like could be considered econometrics. However, in practice econometrics is about testing economic hypotheses with statistical techniques. Respected econometricians have given us a variety of definitions. One favorite, perhaps because of its brevity, is from Henri Theil: "Econometrics is concerned with the empirical determination of economic laws." (Theil 1971, p. 1).
