AbstractMuch philosophical attention has been devoted to whether economic models explain and more generally to how scientific models represent. Yet there is an issue more practically important to economics than either of these, which I label theefficiency question: regardless of how exactly models represent, or of whether their role is explanatory or something else, is current modeling practice an efficient way to achieve these goals or should research efforts be redirected? In addition to showing how the efficiency question has been relatively neglected, I give two examples of the kind of analysis it requires.