This paper explores the culture in which academic economists work, and tries to show how an appreciation of this culture makes their work more under-standable and valuable to mainstream sociology. Economists are not inter-
ested in representing reality, but in constructing models that simplify reality to isolate mechanisms that account for observed phenomena. Economists have a distinctive epistemic culture, sustained by the discourse through which they
talk and think about their work. This discourse mediates the relationship be-tween the mathematical models they devise and the economic phenomena to which they apply. This study reveals economists’ culture based on in-depth interviews with academic economists and an ethnographic study of economic departments in Israel.

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