Yoram Barzel
Encyclopedia
Yoram Barzel is an Israel
i economist and a professor of economics at the University of Washington
. He is interested in Property
Rights
, Applied Price Theory, and Political Economy
.
. He completed his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago
in 1961. He specializes in price theory and economic organization
.
, rationing
by waiting, divided ownership of complex assets, measurement costs, and the economic origins of democracy
. In the process Barzel's work unearthed the economic rationale for many institutions and offered a framework for analyzing them. Barzel holds an important place among all economists for expanding the scope of economic science in a way that focuses attention on the importance of institutions and the economic logic of their variety.
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i economist and a professor of economics at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
. He is interested in Property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
Rights
Rights
Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory...
, Applied Price Theory, and Political Economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
.
Education
Barzel graduated with a B.A. (1953) and M.A. (1956) in economics from Hebrew University of JerusalemHebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
. He completed his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
in 1961. He specializes in price theory and economic organization
Organization
An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...
.
Research
Barzel is known for developing a property rights/transaction cost approach to economics and he has written on topics ranging from car racing to slavery to Jewish lending to voting rules in condominium associations. Among his many ideas are those about racing to claim assets, multitaskingMultitasking
Multitasking may refer to any of the following:*Computer multitasking - the apparent simultaneous performance of two or more tasks by a computer's central processing unit...
, rationing
Rationing
Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, or services. Rationing controls the size of the ration, one's allotted portion of the resources being distributed on a particular day or at a particular time.- In economics :...
by waiting, divided ownership of complex assets, measurement costs, and the economic origins of democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
. In the process Barzel's work unearthed the economic rationale for many institutions and offered a framework for analyzing them. Barzel holds an important place among all economists for expanding the scope of economic science in a way that focuses attention on the importance of institutions and the economic logic of their variety.
Book
Following are the books published by Barzel.- The Political Economy of the Oil Import Quota, (with Christopher D. Hall), (Prefaced by George Stigler), Hoovers Institution Press, Stanford University, 1977
- Economic Analysis of Property Rights, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
- Productivity Change, Public Goods and Transaction Costs: Essays at the Boundaries of Microeconomics, (Economists of the Twentieth Century), Edward Elgar, 1995.
- A Theory of the State: Economic Rights, Legal Rights, and the Scope of the State, Cambridge University Press, 2002.