Analytical research in the social sciences and elsewhere calls for constructing models, and then testing and modifying them through a recursive openended process. While a great deal of attention has been placed on ways and means for the quantitative testing of models, the segments of the research process that are concerned with generating and modifying them has by and large been left unexplored. Certainly, there is a great deal of merit in the widely held belief that the selection of the right variables and their combination into suitable models is ultimately due to a creative flair that cannot be decomposed into modules and routinized. Nevertheless it might prove useful to identify recurring procedures for generating, modifying and mending models that have been or could have been applied in unrelated contexts and that can be decomposed into a sequence of clearly identifiable steps. There can be no guarantee that useful models will ever be arrived at through the application of such procedures. On the other hand they might provide useful guidelines and frames of reference, and perhaps could stimulate a greater awareness of "how" creative research is carried out.In this paper an expansion method for the construction and modification of models is defined and then is illustrated by a number of examples. Several models in the literature have been, or may have been, or could have been arrived at through a de fact0 application of it. Such applications however appear to be ad hoc solutions to specific problems rather than implementations of a general and clearly identified procedure.
Consider the mode of enquiry that involves thinking about thinking. The expansion methodology originates within it, from an analysis of the thought processes presiding upon the construction of any mathematical models of any realities. The focal point of this paper is a discussion of the relations between the expansion methodology, mathematical modeling, and spatial econometrics.
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