I get the impression that although respectable economists are aware the real world is complicated, to get published and taken seriously they have to put maths and equations in their papers hence the spherical cows. But economic behaviour at the base is human behaviour and whether someone is going to overpay to flip a condo in Florida is fundamentally down to their thinking, not some equation. But the human stories get kind of ignored in favour of the maths.

It's a bit like why people still publish in Elsevier in spite of them being awful - it's because it's how you get on in your career. Similarly differential equations about spherical cows get you promoted.