General-to-specific or specific-to-general modelling? An opinion on current econometric terminology

It is argued that what is the dominant approach to analyzing systems of cointegrated variables is not well described as general-to-specific (gets) modelling. The gets approach was developed during the last decades predominantly in a single equation framework. For multivariate modelling and especially cointegration analysis the leading approach is better classified as bottom-up or specific-to-general (spec) modelling.