Research Spokes
Israel & the Regional Economy
The Project on Israel and the Regional Economy is organized on a hub and spoke model with four initial areas of research.
Startup & Innovation
Starting from a history of socialist governments, hyperinflation, and high unemployment in the 1980s, prudent public and private sector efforts transformed the Israel economy into one of the world’s most vibrant start-up ecosystems. High-technology start-up activity was virtually non-existent in the early 1990s, but adept government policy was a critical stimulus for jump starting the entrepreneurial sector.
Reskilling
Israel’s innovation-driven economy stands as a global success story, yet the benefits of this growth remain unevenly shared. Israel’s long experience with workforce integration and reskilling initiatives provides a unique opportunity to study the effectiveness and scalability of programs aimed at closing employment and income gaps across its society. This project seeks to identify, evaluate, and support effective reskilling initiatives—such as those directed at Arab and ultra-Orthodox populations—to promote more inclusive economic participation and growth, and to generate actionable insights for Israel and the broader region.
Health Policy
Given the inevitable scarcity of public-sector resources, central to both economic and health policy is the issue of how to improve the productivity of medical care in the region. Improving medical productivity is not simply about spending more or less; rather it requires an understanding of how money spent on health care for a given population can bring greater value (i.e., health produced per dollar).
Banking & Finance
Financial institutions almost always play a key role in mobilizing savings, allocating investment among competing applications, and facilitating ordinary commercial transactions. Sometimes, these activities occur within traditional commercial banks, which take deposits and make commercial and industrial loans. However, these activities often involve nonbank financial institutions and capital markets. The empirical evidence regarding the relative importance of traditional banks and financial markets at different stages of development is mixed.
Another dimension of the development process pertains to the role of within-country versus cross-country regional arrangements. In our context, the question is whether banking and finance networks should extend across state boundaries.