Biography

I obtained my Ph.D. in Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in June 2005. The title of my dissertation, which was done under the supervision of Professor Joseph Zeira, is `Economy Structure, Age Structure and Economic Growth' and reflects my main research interests, which can be summarized in two different aspects of Economic Growth: IO-Productivity and Demographic Economics.
My dissertation includes three different papers. While the first two papers contribute to understanding therelationship between the structure of the economy and income differences across countries, the third paper studies the macroeconomic implications of resource allocation among different members of the household and the feedback from the macroeconomic environment to the household's decisions.
The first paper studies the phenomenon of `division of labor' and its impact on economic performance. It shows how differences in productivity across countries at the micro level can be amplified at the macro level, and it therefore contributes to the explanation of the observed large international differences in per capita income.
The second paper studies the reasons for different levels of diversification across countries and their impact on growth. It presents a theory of how sectors are endogenously created in an economy and what affects their number or distribution.
The third paper studies the relationship between longevity, fertility and education. Moreover, it challenges the proposed theoretical link between longevity and education by showing several circumstances under which this causality fails to hold.
During my Ph.D. studies I won several awards and fellowships. 2003/04: The Wolf Scholarship for Ph.D. students; The Israel Ministry of Science Culture and Technology Scholarship for Ph.D. students. 2002/03: Blazoska Fellowship for Ph.D. students; The Samuel Neaman Institute Research Grant. 2001/02: The Israeli Ministry of Science Culture and Technology Scholarship for Ph.D. students; The Samuel Neaman Institute Research Grant.
2005/06: I pursued my post-doctoral studies as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. During this year, I worked on the  papers described above and started working on a new paper capturing the link between fertility and underdevelopment.