What are stylized facts?

Economists use the term ‘stylized fact’ in many contexts, though the meaning of this phrase and the motivation for using such a concept is unclear. In this paper, we provide a philosophical analysis of stylized facts, which aims to be methodologically interesting and useful. While our framework applies to all principled uses of stylized facts, we illustrate its core features by applying it to Nicholas Kaldor's initial and exemplary use of stylized facts in growth economics.