Initially, the emphasis was on the development of econometric methods. The first major
debate over econometric method concerned the applicability of the probability calculus
and the newly developed sampling theory of R.A. Fisher to the analysis of economic data.
Frisch (1934) was highly skeptical of the value of sampling theory and significance tests in
econometrics. His objection was not, however, based on the epistemological reasons that
lay behind Robbins’s and Keynes’s criticisms of econometrics. He was more concerned
with the problems of multicollinearity and measurement errors which he believed were
pervasive in economics and to deal with the measurement error problem he developed his
confluence analysis and the method of ‘bunch maps’. Although used by some econometricians,
notably Tinbergen (1939) and Stone (1945), the bunch map analysis did not find
much favour with the profession at large. Instead, it was the probabilistic rationalizations
of regression analysis, advanced by Koopmans (1937) and Haavelmo (1944), that formed
the basis of modern econometrics.