This article examines the charge that Thirlwall's law is a theoretical tautology. It shows that a certain approach to empirical testing of that law can sometimes – under conditions analysed here – result in econometric estimates that reflect an approximate identity or ‘near-tautology’. Nevertheless, other methods of empirically testing the law are not subject to the near-tautology critique, and hence the theory itself is not a tautology. Econometric estimates for the US and Mexico reveal that the near-tautology critique applies to data for the former but not the latter; the difference in these results is explained by exactly the reasons discussed here. The article offers an alternative interpretation of Thirlwall's law as implying a benchmark for analysing whether national income, rather than relative prices, is the main adjusting factor in response to current-account imbalances in the long run.

中文翻译：

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瑟尔沃尔定律不是重言式，但对它的一些经验检验几乎是

本文探讨了瑟尔沃尔定律是理论重言式的指控。它表明，对该定律进行实证检验的某种方法有时可以——在此处分析的条件下——产生反映近似同一性或“近乎重言式”的计量经济学估计。然而，其他实证检验法律的方法不受近乎重言式的批评，因此该理论本身不是重言式。美国和墨西哥的计量经济学估计表明，近乎重言式的批评适用于前者的数据，但不适用于后者；这些结果的差异正是由这里讨论的原因来解释的。这篇文章提供了对瑟尔沃尔定律的另一种解释，它暗示了分析国民收入而不是相对价格是否具有基准