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A research strategy is suggested that separates the issue of inference from the problems of prediction or of quantitative policy analysis of an empirical parametric model and illustrates a new methodology that enables this in a test for prima facie causality. Unlike the conventional parametric test, the more powerful multiple rank F test is invariant to monotonic transformations of the variables and independent of the error distribution. Employing this test, the Wagnerian hypothesis, supported by conventional parametric analysis, is rejected and the conventional Keynesian theory is accepted. Copyright 1990 by MIT Press.