עברית

Professor Emeritus Arye Hillman

Email
arye.hillman@biu.ac.il
Office
205; Building 504
Fields of Interest

POLITICAL ECONOMY/POLITICIZED ECONOMIC POLICY

Initial research focused on political decisions regarding international trade and migration policies. Thereafter, research extended to the study of the political interface with public policy more generally. A parallel theme has been the social cost of political rent creation and rent seeking (time and resources used in seeking advantageous policy decisions). During the decade of the 1990s, in collaboration with the World Bank, my focus was the transition from socialism to a private-ownership market economy. Post-2000 research at the IMF was on failures of economic development. I am also interested in expressive behavior and in prejudice and discrimination. My textbook ‘Public finance and public policy: A political economy perspective on responsibilities and limitations of government’ (Cambridge University Press, 3rd edition 2019) integrates classical public finance with political economy and public choice.

There was initial resistance to political economy in academia. The same resistance was encountered by the public choice school, with whose themes my research in time coalesced. The assumptions of lump-sum taxes and benevolent government have been proposed as having been made in the mainstream economics model for convenience. The assumptions also protect (and project) a socialist or in the U.S. ‘liberal’ ideology. Lump-sum taxes describe people as contributing according to ability rather than reward, and such taxes facilitate redistribution of income without efficiency losses being incurred through the excess burden of taxation. Add the assumption of government benevolence and there are also no social losses from rent seeking because budgetary benefits and taxation are benevolently predetermined. It is informative that, when politics began to enter the mainstream economic models, the focus was on the ‘median voter’ who is decisive under majority voting. My interpretation is that the median-voter model was a means of avoiding referring to the political agency problem of representative democracy that forms the basis for political economy or politicized economics.

 

----------------------------------------------

 

 

Reception Hours
in coordination by email
PO Box
30
Personal Website
http://econ.biu.ac.il/en/hillman
Research Categories
Public Economics
Presentations

Plenary talks and public and invited lectures (excludes departmental seminars)

  • Jadavpur University, Kolkata, Department of Economics, 10th February 2020, “Interface of Economics and Politics”
  • Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, February 6, 2020, “Ambiguous protection”
  • Armenian Economic Association, Yerevan, June 14-16 June 2018. Keynote speaker on: Politics and public policy.
  • The University of the West Indies at Mona, Kingston, Jamaica. 1st Conference of Caribbean Economists, March 9-10 2017. Plenary lecture on ‘The political economy of public policy: The case of income support and work incentives’.
  • Guangxi Normal University, School of Political Science and Public Administration, Guilin, China, November 1 and November 3, 2016, “Public finance and public policy”
  • Huazhong University of Science and Technology, School of Public Administration, Wuhan, China, November 7, “Public finance and public policy”
  • University of Genoa, lecture on “Political economy”, at ceremony conferring an honorary doctorate, March 4 2016.
  • Tullock Memorial Conference, George Mason University, Arlington, VI, USA. “The political economy of an idea: The case of rent seeking”, 2-3 October 2015.
  • Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, Conference on Public Finance, Public Economics, and Public Policy, keynote speaker, “Expressive behavior and public policy”, 5-6 December 2013.
  • Trade and the Organization of Production in the Global Economy: A Conference in Honor of Wilfred Ethier, Vanderbilt University, “Rent extraction and income redistribution: A behavioral perspective on international trade policy”, October 25-26, 2013.
  • Australasian Public Choice Conference, University of Tasmania. Plenary lecture: “Beyond criticism: Logrolling and decoy voting in the United Nations”, December 10-11 2012
  • National University of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Public lecture: “Expressive behavior and public policy”, August 13, 2012
  • World Bank, ECA PREM Seminar, Washington DC, on “Lost in transition”, June 19, 2012
  • XII International Conference on Economic and Social Development, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, “The professional literature in economics”, 3-4 April 2012
  • Public Choice Society, World Conference, Miami. Plenary talk on the contributions of Gordon Tullock, “A good idea: So what”. March 2012
  • Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies May 2011. Public lecture on: "Identity and expressive behavior in voting in Israel"
  • Public Choice Society, San Antonio, March 2011. Plenary presentation: “Behavioral political economy”
  • Silvaplana Workshop on Political Economy. Pontresina, July 2010. “Expressive policy traps”
  • CESifo 3rd Workshop on Political Economy, Dresden, December 2009. Keynote speaker on “Expressive behavior”
  • European Public Choice Society, Athens, April 2009. Plenary lecture on: “Expressive behavior in economics and politics: An overview and a perspective”
  • Alexander von Humboldt Foundation: The Israeli Humboldt Club, the Humboldt Kolleg Symposium on “When Science and Humanities Meet”, January 8, 2009. Invited lecture: “The welfare state”
  • Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, 21 May 2008. Public lecture: "The work ethic and the welfare state"
  • Hubei College of Economics, China, October 10, 2007. Public lecture: “Is social justice achievable?”
  • Singapore Economic Review annual public lecture, Nanyang University, September 20, 2007, “Globalization and social justice”
  • Humboldt University, Berlin, July 9-13 2007, MEMS guest lecturer, public lectures on “Current aspects of public finance and public policy” 
  • BESA Institute for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, May 7, 2007, public lecture on “Why does the Arab world remain poor?”
  • University of Havana, 44th Anniversary of the Initiation of the Study of Economics, Havana, Cuba, October 6, 2006. Plenary lecture on: “The elusive quest for social justice”
  • Mont Pelerin Society General Meetings, Salt Lake City, August 15-20, 2004.  Plenary address on: “Institutions of international decision making: the United Nations”
  • The World Bank, PREM Conference, Washington DC, April 27-28, 2004.  Debate with Jeffrey Sachs on: “Economic policies for failed states”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/magazine/07SACHS.html?pagewanted=all&…
  • European Public Choice Society, Berlin, April, 2004. Plenary lecture on: “Development failure”
  • Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Public lecture, “Why are some countries rich and others poor?” August 2000.
  • Israel Economic Association, Symposium on 50 years of Economic Research in Israel, April 28, 1999. Invited lecture on: “Political Economy”
  • European Public Choice Society Annual Conference, Prague, April 1997. Presidential Address: "Political economy and political correctness"
  • Mont Pelerin Society General Meeting, Cannes, September 1994. Plenary address: "Nostalgia, self-interest, and the transition from socialism"
  • European Public Choice Society Annual Conference, Portrush, April 1993. Plenary address: "The transition from socialism: Some comforting thoughts for adherents to a public choice perspective"
  • Geneva Environmental Meetings, Environment and Development: Conflict and Convergence, May 1992. Presentation on: "Environmental protection and international trade"
  • Annual Meetings of the Economic Association of Israel, Tel-Aviv, December 1991. Plenary lecture: "The political economy of international trade policy"
  • European Public Choice Society Annual Conference, Meersburg, April 1990. Plenary lecture on "International trade policy: Benevolent dictators and optimizing politicians"
  • Taft Lecture, University of Cincinnati, April 1989. Public lecture on: “Liberalizing socialist industry"
Teaching

PhD thesis supervision, Bar-Ilan University:

  • Yoav Zeif, 1999. Three essays in international trade policy and income distribution
  • Shirit Katav-Herz, 2002, Social norms, labor standards, and international consequences
  • Ronen Bar-El, 2006. Essays in intergenerational economics
  • Odelia Rosin, 2008. The economic consequences of obesity
  • Yariv Weltzman, 2010. The persistence of ineffective aid
  • Rezina Sultana, 2011. Essays on the political economy of economic development
  • Doron Klunover, 2016. Three essays in the theory of contests

  • Courses taught (graduate and undergraduate):

Teaching and thesis supervision

  • Public economics
  • Political economy
  • Public policy
  • International economics
  • Microeconomic theory
Personal

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES – ARYE L. HILLMAN

Europe

My parents Yehoshua Hillman (ז"ל) (Helman and Pinczewski families) and my mother Rosa (ז"ל) (née Borenstein) survived the holocaust. There are different types of survivors, those who survived by being hidden or crossing into Russia or finding other havens, and those who did not escape. My parents did not escape. My father had an Auschwitz number on his arm. My mother survived through usefulness in forced labor and told how she saved 300 young women who were seamstresses from murder in the last days of the war by standing up to her handlers and declaring that the girls would not leave their sewing machines to go outside the building. With the Red Army approaching, the handlers fled without taking time to force the girls outside to kill them in a group.

After liberation, in the case of my father and mother by the Red army, survivors went home to see who was left alive (a case of a Schelling focal point). My father found my mother wandering around in Lodz, alone and confused, and took care of her. Poland could at the time be dangerous for survivors, in particular those seeking to reclaim property. There was a pogrom against Jewish survivors in Kielce Poland in 1946. My parents left Poland in 1946, crossing borders, and reaching a displaced people's camp in southern Germany, from which they moved to the nearby small town of Bad Wörishofen, where I was born. I was to be their only surviving child. My mother explained that ‘one I can protect’. My parents feared that the conditions of the holocaust could return. Both my mother and father had previously been married. Their respective spouses and children had perished. Their experiences left them forever fearful.

My mother’s outrage at what had happened to her in the holocaust never subsided. Growing up in our house meant exposure to continual rage. Kitchen cupboard doors were slammed late into the night. My mother would over and over ask the question was ‘Why did someone not come to save us?’ In 1985 I was present at a meeting in Israel between my mother and her brother Yaacov, who also survived. They had not met for some 40 years. There were no introductory remarks when my mother entered her brother’s living room. She said (in Yiddish) ‘why did you let them take the child?’ He replied: ‘Had I not given them the child, they would have returned later and taken you with the child.’

My mother believed that she would have saved her four-year old son Yitzhak Berle. She had previously been put on a death train with her son but escaped when the train stopped. She boarded another train, where she entered a compartment of German soldiers, whom she told that she was Volksdeutch, meaning that she was part of the Germanic population of Poland. She believed that she could have saved Yitzhak Berle again, had her brother (my uncle) not given the child to the collectors-for-death of Jewish children. That thought and the frustration never left her.

My father was silent about what had happened to him and his family. My father told me that he had entered into a personal contract in Auschwitz that, if he survived, he would, for the course of his life, honor Jewish traditions. The contract applied to his descendants. After many years, I insisted that he tell me about himself. I asked ‘who are you?’ And ‘what happened?’ His reply was ‘I have never told you because I did not want to make you insane by hearing what was done to us.’ And there he stopped, never to return to these topics again. I did learn that my father lost his wife and two children.

To this day, I cannot see a film about the Holocaust or confront any other reminder of what happened. I do not need reminding. A poignant picture that remains in my mind is of a woman of advanced age holding the hand of a small boy taking him to the gas chamber. With some likelihood, could that have been my brother and grandmother? My parents survived because they were of a useful generation, not too young and not too old. Their survival allowed me to subsequently live, and also the family that I have spent my life reconstructing.

My first language is Yiddish, which remained the language spoken at home. My second language was German, spoken in kindergarten and on the street. Bad Wörishofen where I was born is situated in Bavaria off the highway between Munich and Lindau. The town has spa waters that have purported curative properties. The town is beautiful and worth a visit. We lived in Bad Wörishofen until late 1951. My parents’ intention had been to move to Israel but there had however been reports of insufficient food and hard times including terrorist incursions. I was to close the circle by later moving to Israel in 1974 with my wife Jeannette and our children. My parents eventually joined us in 1995. They lived out the last years of their lives in Israel, in the presence of their grandchildren and great grandchildren.

 

Australia

We moved from Germany to Australia, where we arrived in early 1952. The ocean journey was long, going from Marseilles through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific. My parents chose to settle in the town of Newcastle, north of Sydney. We lived in a working-class area of a working-class town. My best friend often went to school barefoot, which I did also, not wanting to be different. Amazingly, in retrospect, shoes were not required at school, but this was the early 1950s in a large but provincial Australian town.

In our working class neighborhood, my parents built up a successful retail clothing business based on trust and personal credit, at a time when credit and trust were not part of the usual business model. Women came to my mother to buy clothes because, if a dress did not suit, she immediately would say ‘not for you, take it off’. She imposed her taste but she apparently had good taste because the customers kept coming back. My father managed the business and continued with the tailoring of men’s suites that was his profession. He in time became the equivalent of the local rabbi, which he could do because of his pre-war yeshiva studies. My mother was an effective businesswoman although she had left school in pre-war Poland at the age of 12. My father was learned in the traditional Jewish manner and was unfamiliar with Latin characters.

Admittance to a selective regional high school introduced me to a new milieu. Other children at the school had more extensive English vocabularies. I was in the A class that studied Latin, which was a special privilege. The Latin teacher was said to be the secretary of the local branch of the Communist Party and we were made familiar not only with Ovid but also Spartacus. I played rugby and also ‘Australian’ football, and was a member of the school chess team. In retrospect, it seems that I was trying to please my mother with various dimensions of success. The intention was to take her out of depression.

In 1967 I married Jeannette (née Mann) and in the same year completed an honors degree in economics at the local University of Newcastle. With 1st class honors and the University Medal, I was encouraged by Professor Warren Hogan, the department chair, to pursue an academic career. When Warren Hogan called to inform me that I had won the University Medal, I did not know that the Medal existed. I had to ask him what it was all about.

I was awarded a Commonwealth (of Australia) PhD scholarship that I intended to use to study with Professor Murray Kemp at the University of NSW in Sydney. Professor Harry Edwards, who was at the time setting up the economics department at newly opened Macquarie University in western Sydney, convinced me that I could complete a PhD at Macquarie while teaching. I accepted a teaching position and began a PhD at Macquarie. Peter Lloyd from Australian National University was external advisor. I was happy to be able to contribute, years later, to Peter Lloyd’s retirement Festschrift.

Harry Edwards left academia after being elected to the Australian federal parliament for the Liberal (actually conservative) Party and remained a backbencher for 22 years. With his Oxford PhD, he was surely a more competent economist than the politicians who had positions of economic decision making when the Liberal Party was in office. There is political economy in the case study of his career. A good economist is apparently not necessarily a successful politician.

My wife Jeannette’s father Joseph Mann (ז"ל) was a Sydney lawyer who had arrived in Australia as a baby from Harbin in China. Her mother Netta (ז"ל) was born in Australia. Her parents had emigrated from Odessa and ran a pub in Ballarat in the gold-mining area of the state of Victoria, and subsequently had a pub in an inner western suburb of Sydney. Netta traveled from far to help us out whenever she was needed. Our first great granddaughter is named Netta.

    

Graduate studies: the U.S.

In 1970, I resigned from a tenured position at Macquarie University in Sydney and left with Jeannette and our two young daughters Tamara and Ilana to begin graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Various graduate-school scholarship offers that I received were all for one year contingent for renewal on academic performance. I was risk-averse. Gerry Adams, head of the Economics Research Unit at Penn, offered a guaranteed three-year appointment as Research Fellow. The position paid tuition and provided a small stipend and health insurance. Jeannette’s U.S. visa did not allow her to work. Graduate school teachers included Irving Kravis, Wilfred Ethier, Albert Ando, Thomas Sargent, Oliver Williamson, Lawrence Klein, Herbert Levine, Phoebus Dhrymes and Karl Shell. Sargent, Williamson, and Klein went on to be awarded a Nobel Prize. They deserved recognition. So did others on this list.

The three-year fellowship of the Economic Research Unit at the University of Pennsylvania provided an incentive to complete the PhD within the limited time period. Zvi Adar, a graduate student ahead of me, who subsequently became a professor in the Tel-Aviv University business school, gave me the invaluable advice to choose an advisor who had completed his own PhD thesis in a short period of time. I had nine months left of the Fellowship when I approached Albert Ando, who taught the public economics graduate course, and asked whether the remaining time was sufficient to write a thesis. Albert replied ‘I wrote my thesis in three months and I am three times cleverer than you, so you should be able to finish in nine months’ – which I did. The thesis combined international and public economics. Bill Ethier was an invaluable co-advisor. Bill went on arguably to be the leading international economist of his generation. The advisor for his doctoral thesis had been Ron Jones at Rochester University.

I had taken an optional graduate course on the properties of the linear expenditure system (which is a specification for estimation of demand functions). As much as I tried, I could not become enthusiastic about a semester on a narrow topic that had no intellectual content. My grade in that class was the only non-A on my graduate record. I learned later than the instructor of my non-A course had, perhaps as an act of revenge, attempted to convince Bill Ethier not to be my thesis advisor. Bill ignored the advice.

As the end of the three years of graduate school approached, Irving Kravis, the senior international-trade professor at Penn at the time, offered to propose me for a position in a leading department (Stanford). I asked instead for a recommendation for a position in Israel. Our intent had always been that graduate school in America would be a stopover on our way to settle in Israel. I accepted an offer from Tel-Aviv University. There was a detour. Our financial resources, not substantial in the first place, were depleted, and, although my thesis had been accepted, ‘revisions’ were requested. We stayed in the U.S. an additional fourth year at the University of Illinois in Urbana, from which I had received an income-maximizing offer for a one-year visiting appointment. The mid-west was an interesting change from the urban inner-city environment of Philadelphia.

At the University of Illinois, I met Hans Brems, who told me how he had been personally involved in the saving of the Jews of Denmark from the German occupiers. The Jews were transported in boats from Denmark to Sweden. Without detracting from the merit of organizing and transporting the Jews of Denmark, there was a price that the Jews were required to pay for being saved. No Jew was left behind. Jews who had the means paid for those who could not.

 

Israel

Jeannette and I had arrived in the U.S. in 1970 with our two daughters Tamara and Ilana. We arrived in Israel in 1974, with the addition of our sons Eli and Benjamin. The four children ranged in age from 3 months to 6 years. We had never previously been in Israel, which was for us a concept rather than an actual physical location. With the Jewish state restored, we felt an obligation to come to live to Israel. I continue to be amazed that Jews fortunate to have been born when the state of Israel has been re-established do not feel the need to move to Israel to participate in reconstructing the land that was lost so long ago. After their expulsion by the Romans (who renamed the land of Israel Palestine, with reference to the historical adversaries of Israel, the Philistines), for some 2,000 years we Jews wandered the world and could not defend themselves. What more uplifting personal challenge could there than to participate in the re-establishment of the state of Israel? 

A saying in Israel is that we come to Israel to build, and to be ourselves rebuilt. That certainly applied to me. I wanted to build but I needed rebuilding. Some of the building and rebuilding came from serving in the army (the Israel Defense Force). No matter what happened to me, I was not going to die in the manner of my siblings pushed into a gas chamber.

My first position in the army was as a field medic in an engineering unit (we cleared minefields and had the task of building temporary bridges for infantry and tanks to cross). I laughed when, after completion of the course, others were assigned as medics to the tank core. It had been suggested that I would be assigned to a behind-the-lines clinic. Then the others laughed at me when I was assigned to the combat engineers, who may have to go out in front of the tanks. In due course, but after some years, my academic credentials led to reassignment to research comparing costs of flying planes of our air force with U.S. costs. In another reassignment I followed a friend to the home-front unit of the army, where, coming into my own, a responsibility was confirming that local governments had spent funds received for construction of public bomb shatters for the designated purpose. Compliance was quite good.

 

Academia

Don Patinkin, who had arrived in Israel in the early years of the modern state from the University of Chicago, was the father of academic economics in Israel. He ensured that academic standards in economics in Israel would be high. In the economics department of Tel-Aviv University, I had excellent colleagues. Elhanan Helpman and Efraim Sadka arrived when I did, with PhDs respectively from Harvard and MIT. Elhanan seemed focused on broader recognition than he believed possible as an academic in Israel and in the end was on the faculty at Harvard. Efraim remained an academic but went in the direction of involvement in local business activity.

At Tel-Aviv University, I was advised about the personal benefit from pragmatism of identifying with the ‘left’. I was told to position myself on the left of the spectrum of ideology, so as to be met with acceptance by academics in Israel and abroad. I was also advised to accept all blame that was directed at me as representing the state of Israel, whatever the accusations.

In a meeting with an attaché from the British Embassy in Tel-Aviv, when I asked what would happen if we actually did what we were accused of doing, including by his foreign ministry and the BBC, his reply was ‘that would be awful’. The British government had never forgiven us for the revolt against their occupation and for winning the Israel war of independence against Arab armies that the British had backed. On leaving what was to be the state of Israel (they like many other retained the Roman name Palestine), the British turned the system of forts that had used over to the Arab forces. Britain did not vote in favor of the creation of the state of Israel in the United Nations resolution establishing the new state. Ironically in 1956 Israel turned to Israel as an ally in an attempt to reclaim the Suez Canal that Egypt had nationalized. 

I found, through my conversations, that our critics were concerned that we had the means to defend ourselves, which contradicted the historical presumption over the prior centuries that Jews should be victims. I would attempt to point out that six Arab armies had invaded the nascent state of Israel in 1948 and that a population exchange had taken place as had occurred elsewhere around the same time, and that uniquely only the population exchange involving Jews and the Arabs was not recognized - and that only the Palestinian Arabs were permitted to pass their refugee status on their children, perpetuated through a special United Nations agency. For this, I received angry glares from the critics of Israel. If my colleagues of the left in Israel were present, I could see in their eyes ‘I told you so. Just agree with them.’

It became clear that facts do not matter when critics of Israel make their case. In the beginning, I was not yet aware of the subjectivity of ‘truth’. In time, I came to understand post-modernism whereby ‘how I feel is my truth’ and ‘my truth is as good as yours’. There is then no point in argument or discussion. Only emotion and feelings matter.

 

The Swedish professor

As a case in point of the futility of seeking to present objective facts, sitting at a round table at a conference at Tel-Aviv University, a prominent Swedish economist (who was a frequent visitor to Tel-Aviv University and with a role in the Nobel Prize Committee) declared to us that ‘you were doing to the Palestinian children what the Germans did to Jewish children at Auschwitz’. In the absence of a reply from anybody else, I observed that I would not visit a country in which I believed that atrocities were being committed, and left it at that. Then thereafter I sent the Swedish professor a message pointing out that either he was denying the holocaust, or he was in the tradition of blood libels against the Jews accusing us of committing atrocities that we do commit. Where were our concentration camps and where were our gas chambers? There were none. Or did he mean by his comparison that the Germans and their helpers also had no concentration camps and no gas chambers and that the story of the holocaust was a hoax?

In a reply, the Swedish professor was livid that I had dared challenge him and offered no apology. To which I replied that I would seek his arrest for holocaust denial, which was a crime in various countries (in Israel, a law to criminalize Holocaust denial was passed by the Knesset in 1986). Some years later, he did return, for participation in a conference on the occasion of the retirement of Asaf Razin, a prominent economics professor at Tel-Aviv University. Following through with asking for the arrest of the Swedish professor would however dampen Asaf Razin’s retirement celebration. As semester stay in Princeton in 2004 coincided with the presence of the Swedish professor. We were temporarily colleagues. He was discourteous. He exemplifies and indeed personifies the animosity based on lies that the state of Israel has confronted, or is a holocaust denier. I have not been able to determine which.

 

Politics and ideology

Having grown up in a working class neighborhood, my sympathy has been with workers. The Labor Party in Israel did not represent the workers. The Party rather represented the privileged elites, including the managers of factories and businesses of the ‘socialist’ sector that in the 1970s and 1980s still controlled the economy. Monopolies and cartels, and trade restrictions, were justified as protecting workers’ job security, but were sources of privileged rents for ‘socialist’ managers. A paper that I wrote in 1988 paper listed the monopolies of the ‘holding company of the workers’ and the private monopolies and cartels. We did not have planned socialism but rather an economic system that has been called ‘market socialism’.

Workers in Israel have tended to vote not for Labor but for the Likud or other parties. In 1977, the previously unthinkable happened when the ‘left’, which had won every election since the establishment of the modern state in 1948, lost the general election. The deep state remained controlled by the left – the government bureaucracy, the staff of the central bank, and the supreme court – and the left controlled much of the economy through ‘the holding company of the workers’.

The ‘left’ in Israel used organized socialism to establish the modern state of Israel through collective institutions, including the kibbutz. The Jews who returned to Israel, from the later part of the 19th century on, did what Jews during the long years of exile had not done. Through collective organization, including prominently the kibbutz, they defended themselves and they worked the land. In so doing, the basis for the reborn independent state of Israel was created. In the general election of 1981, which the left also lost, the appeal to voters of the Labor Party was ‘we built this country and you should give it back to us’.

 

The U.S. loan guarantees

The left did not win an election until 1992, and then through intervention of the U.S. administration. I was asked by the economic advisor to the prime minister’s office in 1992 to travel to Washington to attempt to find out why we were being defiled with lies and accusations about our economic system. The economic system of Israel had changed. The socialist sector had been largely privatized. Given my past criticisms of the impediments to a market economy, I was a credible representative to declare that criticism of our economy as socialist was outdated and inaccurate. We were being accused of being the last holdout of a socialist economy with North Korea and Albania, both communist dictatorships (Albania subsequently changed, North Korea was to go with communist monarchic rule). My reception at the U.S. State Department was hostile. When I asked about the criticism of Israel in Time Magazine and in other parts of the U.S. media, I was given no answers and was met with smiles, or perhaps smirks. I had no opportunity to discuss the facts of the Israeli economy. It was however that the smirks were smirks of own-success and the criticisms were being orchestrated.

The criticisms had to do with loan guarantees that the U.S. administration had offered the state of Israel. With the end of the Soviet Union, some one million immigrants arrived in Israel. The U.S. administration offered us loan guarantees for $10 billion dollars. The U.S. would guarantee repayment of loans that Israel would take to finance the absorption of the immigrants. We did not want or need the loan guarantees. The Americans however insisted that we allow them to guarantee our loans. They stressed that we would benefit from a lower interest rate on the loans. We agreed to accept the loan guarantees. Thereupon the criticism of the Israeli economy began.

The argument, emanating from the U.S. administration and supported by the media, was that it was not a good idea to continue with the offer the U.S. loan guarantees because the socialist nature of the Israeli economy meant that in all likelihood we would default and the U.S. would have to make good through the loan guarantees. The criticisms had the opposite effect from reducing interest rates. On the contrary, with Israel declared as a risk for return of loans, interest rates on loans to the state of Israel could only increase.

The Likud was in government, with elections due. In the local media, the loan guarantees for absorption of the immigrants from Russia became $10 billion of grants for the immigrants that the U.S. would not provide to the Likud government but that would be provide if the left – the Labor Party – were returned to office. The loan guarantees were a political scheme to remove what the U.S. administration regarded as an overly nationalist Likud from government. The Likud insisted that Jews had the right to live in the areas called the West Bank. The policy of the U.S. administration was that the settlement of Jews in the West Bank was illegal. The U.S. administration believed that the left led by the Labor Party would be more compliant.

The loan-guarantee ploy was successful. The left was returned office after having lost every election since 1977. My mission to Washington to try to find out why lies were being promoted about the economy of Israel was successful in the sense of information. The U.S. intent was clear. Aided by the American media and by the media in Israel, there was nothing we do to preempt the successful ploy to change the government in Israel. All I could do is write a report pointing out what was going (the report is available). The compliant Labor-supporting media had no incentive to tell the truth about American involvement in domestic Israeli politics. I understood the smirks that I had received at the State Department.

When I arrived at the State Department for a scheduled meeting with the statement that a Palestinian had just died in Israeli custody. This statement was made in aggressive tone as a personal accusation against me. It was evident from the tone that I was not amongst friendly or even neutral people. There was also body language. One of the State Department people was particularly physically intimidating, tall and burley. When I asked our people about the Palestinian who had died in custody, I was informed that indeed there had been a death, but by natural causes. This was confirmed and accepted by the State Department.

The U.S. State Department has been persistently pro-Palestinian even when relations with the President and Congress were more cordial. My explanation as a political economist is that, on entering employment at the State Department, inductees choose a language to learn. The State department provides language classes. Arabic has been a popular language because of the large number of Arabic-speaking countries that offer assignment opportunities for State Department employees. Having chosen the domain of their careers to be Arabic speaking countries, the State Department officials, as a consequence of their language choice, took an anti-Israel position. This self-interest explanation seems preferable to the explanation of anti-semitism evoked as opposition to the Jewish state.       

 

Ideology and religion

The premise of the left was (and is) universal values: ‘If we do not insist on our traditions that separate us from others, we will be more liked.’ My father had sympathies for the left. He related how he would approach Polish Catholics and propose new dividing lines by proposing that ‘the enemy is the capitalist’. He told me how, when he was with communist partisans toward the end of the world war II, a Polish nationalist group had arrived and demanded from the communists that they give them the ‘Jew’. The communists refused. All people were, for the communists, comrades in arms. Universal values had saved my father. 

Few orthodox traditional Jews contributed to the rebuilding of the state of Israel because of a belief that the messiah would arrive and bring about an ingathering of the exiles; hence for orthodox Jews the present reborn state was premature. The orthodox did not serve in the army. They placed the burden of defense on others.

There were however rabbis who accepted the recreated Jewish state of Israel, as a precursor to the arrival of the messiah. A large population in Israel accepts the Jewish state and accepts the worth of continuation of Jewish traditions. The university with the principles of combining adherence to tradition and support for the modern Jewish state is Bar-Ilan, across town from Tel-Aviv University (in the contiguous town of Ramat Gan).

 

Academic dimensions of ideology

When at the end of graduate school I had asked Irving Kravis to approach a university in Israel on my behalf, I had not known about the existence of Bar-Ilan University. I began seeking a move to Bar-Ilan University soon after I arrived at Tel-Aviv University. In 1980 I finally moved, as senior lecturer. Promotion was quick. By 1982 I was associate professor and by 1984 full professor.

Life was uncomfortable at Tel-Aviv University, ideologically and intellectually. I was perhaps the only one in the economics department who welcomed the 1977 election result that replaced the Labor Party in government by the Likud. Perhaps there was expressive anger at me as a symbol of an election outcome that was unwanted by adherents to the left. There was anger and sulking. It seems that democracy for the left had been a façade to appeal to western values and that the left was intended to be permanently in government and Menachem Begin was to play the permanent role of leader of the opposition to show that Israel was a democracy. It is a tribute to democracy in Israel that the electoral result was accepted.

The Israeli ideological left rejected Jewish tradition altogether. I recall at lunch at Tel-Aviv University the economics department chair, in response to a question about where he would be conducting the Passover Seder, replying that he participates in no Seder, because the Seder ‘represented the worst there is’. The Seder is in remembrance of the most important event in Jewish history, liberation from slavery in Egypt, and leaving Egypt to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai. My response to the chairman could have been more measured. But I said that I was uncomfortable confronting the self-hatred that he had demonstrated about himself. He was the chair of the department when a tenure decision was to be made. But then I did not want to stay at Tel-Aviv University.   

When I had tried to move to Bar-Ilan some years previously, ironically, because of the deep ideological divide of the time, I was suspect in approaching Bar-Ilan from Tel-Aviv University. I was told by the rector that there were no vacant positions. Yet there were positions. I have kept the letter. Jacob Paroush paved the way to Bar-Ilan. My academic record was superior to that of others at Tel-Aviv but my traditional Jewish outlook and unwillingness to accommodate to the principles of the left made me, as one forthright faculty member told me, ‘not our sort of person’. Her honesty was much appreciated. From others there had been only suggestive innuendo that I should liberate myself from the bindings of the Jewish past.

There was in the economics department at Tel-Aviv University no room for wide-ranging thought or indeed any dissent from a dictated line of thought. I now recognize the behavior as Bolshevism. The only other free thinker at the time in the department, Shlomo Maital, a Princeton PhD originally from Canada, also departed, for the Technicon in Haifa.

Bar-Ilan was (and remains) subject to two sources of enmity. The ideological left has sought to downplay or reject Jewish traditions. Orthodox Jews reject that anything beyond yeshiva learning is necessary and object to male and female students in the same class as at Bar-Ilan.

Orthodox Jews are in a difficult situation. They continue to await the coming of the messiah to gather Jews from the corners of the earth to recreate that the state of Israel as the restored kingdom of David, but Israel has already been recreated and Jews ingathered. The conditions of the messianic age seem to be present in that Jews can defend themselves and there is food and economic sustenance for everybody. The orthodox cannot however abandon their belief that the true reborn state of Israel is yet to come through the advent of the messiah. Abandonment of the belief would contradict foundations of their belief system.

The left have their own religion and rites. As a matter of quasi-religious principle, the Tel-Aviv department chairman who had declared the Passover Seder to be reprehensible refused to enter the Bar-Ilan campus when, as chair of a promotion committee, I invited him to participate in evaluation of the research of a Bar-Ilan faculty member. The Tel-Aviv professor was the only senior person in Israel in urban economics, which was the field required for the promotion evaluation.

I should point out that everyone at Bar-Ilan served in the army, including myself. The complaint against the orthodox Jews that they would not serve in the army did not apply to the population of which Bar-Ilan was representative that combined continuity of tradition with modernity.         

 

Ideology in economics

When Yitzhak Goldberg, who had a PhD from Chicago and was appointed to a lectureship at Tel-Aviv, departed rather quickly, he left me his graduate lecture notes. Through his notes, when replacing him in his industrial organization course, I discovered the Chicago school. I found that interesting questions could be asked and answered directly without obtuse technicality.

I self-discovered the Public Choice School by reading the 1980 volume ‘Toward a Rent-Seeking Society’. The papers of Gordon Tullock and others in the volume were wise and immediately comprehensible. Here was another strand of economics that expressed ideas directly and did not hide behind exaggerated technicality and abstraction that was intended to pass for intellect and sophistication.

In the age before the internet, visiting academic positions were a means of broadening perspectives. In spring of 1979 a visit to the Australian National University led to joint research with Ngo Van Long, Peter Swan, and Jim Cassing (who was visiting from the University of Pittsburgh). Max Corden, Fred Gruen, and Robert Gregory were there for interesting discussions.

During a stay as visiting professor at UCLA in 1985-87, I benefitted from the intellectual depth of Robert Clower, Harold Demsetz, Arnold Harberger, and Jack Hirshleifer. Sebastian Edwards, Ed Leamer, David Levine, and John Riley were also stimulating colleagues. At UCLA, I met Heinrich Ursprung, with whom a long research collaboration began.

I benefitted from two semesters, separated by some years, at Princeton, where I had the good company of Gene Grossman and Avinash Dixit. A stay in 1990 in the newly created Transition Unit of the World Bank under the directorship of Alan Gelb and subsequent return visits to the World Bank sponsored by Manuel Hinds provided opportunities to travel to and study transition countries at first hand. Being ‘on the ground’ for discussions with government officials reaffirmed the validity of a political-economy perspective on the transition from socialism. A research program with Željko Bogetić of the World Bank continued over the years, including an experiment in Montenegro included to establish whether lack of trust was an impediment to the development of a market economy that replaced the prior socialism. For external validity (whether the experimental results extended to the economy-at-large), we used as subjects ‘ordinary’ university students and students at an evening business school who had employment experience and were engaged in true market activity.

Beginning in the year 2000, Vito Tanzi and Sanjeev Gupta, who had introduced recognition of corruption as an impediment to development into IMF research and policy discussion, invited me to participate in studies of low-income countries with staff members of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department. During my initial visit to the IMF, I formulated a Nietzschean view of development failure. It seemed to me that the primary impediment to economic development in low-income countries was not corruption but rather absence of ethics and the rule of law. The strong appropriated the output of the weak, which undermined incentives of the weak to be productive. The weak have an incentive to pretend to be lazy or unproductive, and to rely on non-appropriable means of happiness, such as music and dance. The domination of the weak by the strong includes the subjugation of women by men. I approached Stanley Fischer, then deputy chief of the IMF, and asked him whether it was acceptable to put out an IMF research paper on the themes of Nietzsche. He replied ‘fine as long as you do not blame the poor for their predicament’ (although he used somewhat different language). My Nietzschean model did not blame the poor for being poor.

If I have been an iconoclast, it is not as a matter of principle, and not at all from the viewpoint of the public-choice school. I did not accept the at-the-time mainstream explanations for public policy based on the ‘public-economics’ model of benevolent government. Because of the Marxian connotations (contributing according to ability), I was uncomfortable with lump-sum taxes and with the assumption of optimal policies set by governments seeking to maximize social welfare. It seemed more appropriate, rather than to assume a political quest for social optimality, to ask ‘optimal for who’?

I was rather naïve regarding ideology until after I had completed graduate school. I realized that there were competing ideologies within economics. I knew of course of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and that the communist countries differed in social and economic organization from private–property market economies. But why should there be ideological differences within academia in western economies? When I understood that a choice was required, I preferred the economic right to the economic left. In this choice, I differed from nearly all academic economists in Israel, and ostensibly from the majority of academic economists in the western world. I do not recall any public-choice papers being assigned reading during my graduate studies.

It was incomprehensible when the Nobel Prize was awarded to James Buchanan but not at the same time to Gordon Tullock. Both had been founders of the public-choice school. Tullock was coauthor with Buchanan of the book The Calculus of Consent for which the Prize was surely given, notwithstanding protestations that Buchanan had made other significant contributions, but so had Tullock.

Public choice provided overall a comfortable academic environment. I have no answer to the question why there has never been an Israeli on the editorial board of the journal Public Choice. In particular, in my department in Bar-Ilan, there was much support for the public-choice research agenda. We contributed journal articles and we must have done more than our fair share of reviewing for Public Choice. Yet no one from the department was invited to join the editorial board of the journal. This is the case for the editorial board of the sister journal the Constitutional Political Economy.

I was for many years busy with editorial responsibilities at the European Journal of Political Economy (which was sympathetic to public-choice ideas). There was not the same reason for not asking my Bar-Ilan colleagues to join the editorial board of Public Choice. We do not understand the criteria that were used for editorial board membership. We do not understand because we rule out systematic bias in exclusion. An answer that could be suggested is that we were associated with U.S. liberal Jews, who in my sample of acquaintances were very much opposed to public-choice ideas. It should have been obvious that their agenda was not ours. Many, for whom Bernard Sanders and George Soros had held the beacons, could not be relied upon to be supportive of the right of self-defense of the state of Israel.

This is not to say that there were not instances of expression of antisemitism and by extension anti-Israeli sentiment at meetings of the European Public Choice Society. The prejudice was however openly expressed, which was preferable to innuendos of the left (although the Swedish professor had been quite forthright). On the right, there is openness. A professor from Portugal asked me how we were doing to solve our problems with the Palestinians, to which I replied ‘not through the Iberian solution’ (the Jews who refused to pretend that they were not Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492). A well-known Swiss professor who, as a matter of principle did not want to travel to Israel, rejected my offer to arrange for him to visit Gaza. Another Swiss professor, teaching in Berlin, would sneak up to me at conferences, make some comment or other that was barely audible, and sneak off, until one day he had the courage to declare openly to my wife Jeannette and myself that, as Jews in Israel, we were not necessarily entitled to the right of self-defense. A professor from Canada, himself Jewish, took a profoundly anti-Israeli line in insisting in a presentation on referring to the ‘wall’ with all the negative connotations of the term, when the separating barrier between Israeli-governed and independently-governed territory of the Palestinian Authority is for the most part a wire fence. 

These types of experiences were however few and far between. There could be pragmatic rather than emotional post-modern lies. Gordon Tullock would complain to me that the Saudis were more important for the United States than Israel because of oil. He did not foresee the increase in U.S. oil production from shale, Israel’s natural-gas discoveries, and the Abraham accords that placed Israel in alliance with Sunni-majority Arab states.

I have found the least anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment among contemporary Germans. There was a terrorist attack at a mall in Tel-Aviv in the week preceding the European Public Choice Society conference that I organized in Israel in 1996. Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader, called the two young girls who perished in the terror attack ‘victims of peace’. There has been much ‘1984’ parlance on the left. In response to the terror attack, intending participants from various countries cancelled their attendance. Of the Germans, only one cancelled, and he sent an apology credibly pointing to the opposition of his wife to his coming. On the other hand, we hear the tormented sentiment that ‘we Germans can never forgive Jews for Auschwitz’, which after some thought is not counterintuitive.

 

Academic evaluation

The experience of 20 years as editor and editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Political Economy (from 1994 to 2015) has brought me to understand the discretion that editors have over what will be published. My co-editor Henry Ursprung and I aimed for objectivity and fairness with authors. We did not wish to treat others as we had been treated by some editors, who had at times been supercilious and condescending, and for whom, in the absence of objective criteria for evaluating merit, the scope was present to favor friends and acquaintances, and authors from ‘leading’ U.S. departments. I have published papers in the ‘leading’ professional journals. The peer-review system for academic publications is far from being fair and objective. Personal connections and luck matter in the review process and a researcher’s academic affiliation can influence editorial decisions. Basically, the editor knows that some reviewers will find fault with any paper whereas other reviewers look for original and interesting content and offer suggestions about to make papers with good ideas publishable. There are no objective criteria. Different people have different views about the merits of papers. Editors use the ambiguity and disagreement about what is a good paper to accept papers they want to accept, and to reject papers they want to reject.

The European Journal of Political Economy was founded as a protest by Manfred Holler as a response to perceived injustice in the editorial handling of a paper that he had submitted to the American Economic Review. It is to Manfred Holler’s credit that he did more than complain. My co-editors and I sought to be faithful to Manfred Holler’s intent in founding the European Journal of Political Economy. Fair evaluation was given to submitted papers. If there was rejection, the reason was set out in detail rather the rejection being communicated in a form letter.

If we wish to judge the merits of a paper, we should read the paper, rather than basing judgment on the journal in which the paper happened to be published. This is in particular the case for authors outside of the elites of the ‘leading departments’ who pre-specify their ‘hot topics’ for a bandwagon effect so that they can cite one another and review each other’s papers for the journals that they control or in which they know, through their personal connections, they will receive favorable treatment. 

Bill Ethier, my graduate school advisor, once told me that I was ‘ahead of my time’ in proposing political economy explanations for international-trade and other public-policy decisions. Being ahead of my time meant that the bandwagon had yet to come, and when the bandwagon did come, there would be others better positioned in the politics of academia to direct the horses. Should I have waited until the topic was mainstream and for ideas to emanate first the ‘leading’ economics departments? Dennis Snower has told me how a paper of his was rejected at a leading journal but then the idea was found in a subsequent paper published by an author from a ‘leading’ U.S. university. When he asked the author to explain, he was told that no idea is publishable in a leading journal until it has been worked through and elucidated in a ‘leading’ economics department. When I was researching the original ideas of Gordon Tullock, a colleague who is a very good technician and theorist asked me (rhetorically) 'so he had good original ideas but so what?'

 

Contemporary events and concerns

In August 2021, my long-time co-author and friend Henry Ursprung passed away, at a relatively young age in our time, leaving a considerable void in my professional life and in the lives of the many others who also appreciated his friendship and humanity. In 1994 we had been awarded the Max-Planck Prize for our research in political economy. Since 1989, we organized the Silvaplana workshop in political economy in the mountains of eastern Switzerland. The workshop was initiated to promote political-economy and public-choice ideas when such ideas were not in the economic mainstream. The workshop has combined presentation of papers with mountain treks and on-the-way discussions. An open call for papers is issued every year. Although Henry is no longer with us, the workshop continues and his memory is there.

I was very proud in March 2016 to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Genoa. The University has a long tradition, dating back to at least 1471. Genoa is the suggested birthplace of Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of the ‘new world’. Did Columbus set out in 1492, the year of the Spanish expulsion of Jews, to find a new world free from the Inquisition? Were there annotations in Hebrew in correspondence he received? The discovery of the ‘New World’ had unfortunate consequences for native populations. The New World however has given us the United States, in which equality of opportunity replaced European privilege and hierarchy. Australia has provided equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity of course does not mean realized equality for everybody. Preconditions can be required for people to avail themselves of equality of opportunity.

 

Geopolitics

It is a remarkable historical continuity that the Jews and their state remain in the 21st century subject to adverse prejudicial treatment. The Jews were accused of bringing the bubonic plague (they suffered less from the plague because of their obligations of hygiene but then were murdered because of the accusation against them). The accusations against the state of Israel in the votes in the United Nations have been like the accusation of purposefully causing the bubonic plague. Although the historical harm cannot now take place, the capital of the Jewish state is recognized by few countries beyond the United States, Israel’s borders are not recognized, and books are written about the case of existence of Israel. Proclamations are made about the right of the Jewish state to self-defense as if this were not an elemental human right. Boycotts are organized against people and goods from Israel. The famous Catalonian theory professor once told me gleefully, after announcing that his wife was Jewish (I do not know what I supposed to make of that) that ‘you are Israelis, you can take it’. The historical continuity and the accompanying prejudicial emotion are interesting topics of research in behavioral political economy.

The ayatollahs of Iran have declared that Israel is a one-bomb country. The declaration has been publicly made. We can wonder what the response might be, had the statement been made with reference to any other country. Certainly there would not have been the silence and acquiescence that has followed the explanation of Iran for having a nuclear program. The silence and acquiescence are frightening. I am taken back to the silence and acquiescence of the holocaust and my mother’s recurring question ‘why did no one came to rescue us – did they not know what was happening’ (translation form Yiddish) – and my father’s inability to describe the horrors he experienced because of his wish to preserve my sanity. Of course, no one came to rescue the Cambodians, or the Biafrans, the East Timorese, and the people of Darfur, and others whose suffering and deaths were on a smaller scale. There is a case for indictment of the world’s political elites. Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor (built by France) in 1981 before the reactor became operational (we can imagine the outcome of the Gulf War had the dictator Saddam Hussein had a last resort nuclear weapon). Israel also destroyed the incipient nuclear reactor of Syria (built by North Korea) in 2007 (we can imagine the outcome of the war in Syria if the dictator Bashar Al-Assad had had a tactical nuclear weapon). We shall have to defend ourselves again preemptively against the reactor being built predicated on we being a one-bomb country. As on the previous occasions, we will be condemned for defending ourselves.    

 

Woke Ideology

The idea of society as a meritocracy has been challenged by ‘woke’ ideology. My understanding is that the ideology attributes past personal success to racial and family advantages and seeks to change the criteria according to which personal success is evaluated. Advantages from the past are to be discontinued. Rather than there being discussion, anyone who disagrees is ‘cancelled’ (in Bolshevik style but they may not know who they are copying).

A question for study is how society can advance with woke criteria. Are we willing to ask medical advice from people who have supplanted the medical practitioners who reached their positions through study and meritocracy? Are we to rely on people who have not studied civil engineering for the construction of bridges and buildings? The overtones are of Mao’s cultural revolution, in which educated urbanites were replaced by uneducated slogan-chanting red-book-waving revolutionaries.

Why did a considerable part of the American middle class acquiesce to proposals to reduce police protection and not take a stand against the mass destruction of property and open theft and looting by woke demonstrators? Was there fear that middle-class resistance would result in open insurrection by the part of the population that saw justification in the riots and property destruction? By the beginning of 2021, crime in major American cities had increased considerably compare to pre-woke times. Victims of crime were often the very minority whose interests woke ideology proclaims to champion.

The intent appears to be to abolish the family and meritocracy based on knowledge and personal endeavor, and to abolish the rule of law so that private property will not be protected. What could the replacement of civilization as we have known it be, other than a social hierarchy based not on competence and personal effort, but on the politics of identity. Ironically, identity and not personal capability and opportunity to succeed were the basis for past racism.

Ra’anana, Israel

January 15, 2022     

CV

PERSONAL AND CAREER INFORMATION

I was born in 1947 in Germany, the only surviving child of parents from Lodz Poland. My undergraduate studies were in Australia (the University of Newcastle) and graduate studies in the U.S. (the University of Pennsylvania). Since 1980 I have been on the faculty of the department of economics at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where I continue to teach. There have been interludes away for sabbatical and visiting appointments, including at UCLA, Princeton, and the graduate school of the University of Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne). I have been a fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. Before commencing graduate studies, I was a tenured lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. I subsequently spent a semester at ANU, and have been a visitor over the years at Australian universities.

My research on political economy began with policies with regard to international trade and migration, which expanded to include public policy more generally. I have conducted research under the auspices of the World Bank on transition from socialism and at the International Monetary Fund on why countries fail to grow and the poor stay poor after governments have received development aid. My most recent parallel appointment has been as research fellow at Ariel University. I shared with Henry Ursprung the Max Planck Prize for Humanities Sciences and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Genoa. 

 

Details

  • Born: Bad Wörishofen, U.S. zone, Germany, 13 January 1947
  • Immigration to Australia 1952
  • Graduate school in U.S. 1970-1973
  • Arrival in Israel 1974
  • Family status: Married Jeannette Hillman (née Mann) 1967, 4 children, 18 grandchildren, to date 4 great grandchildren

Higher education

  • B.A., First Class Honors in Economics and the University Medal, University of Newcastle, Australia 1963-67 (honors thesis advisor Paul Sherwood)
  • M. Ecs. (Honors), Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia 1968-70, degree awarded in 1972 (external thesis advisor Peter Lloyd, Australian National University)
  • PhD Economics, University of Pennsylvania, USA 1970-73 (thesis advisors Albert Ando, Wilfred Ethier)

Academic positions

  • Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics: Senior Lecturer 1980-1982. Associate Professor 1982-1984. Professor of Economics and William Gittes Chair, 1984 -2015. Professor emeritus with retained office and teaching from 2016.
  • Research fellow, CESifo and Ariel University

Offices and honors

  • Max-Planck Prize for Humanities Sciences, joint with Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1994
  • President, European Public Choice Society, 1996-1997
  • Fellow, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, 2000
  • Honorary doctorate, University of Genoa, March 2016

Editorial positions

  • European Journal of Political Economy (Elsevier): Editor and editor-in-chief, 1994-2014, Editorial advisor from 2014
  • Open-Assessment E-journal, for Political Economy and Institutions 2006-2020
  • Australian Economic Papers, editorial board since 2004
  • The Journal of International Trade and Economic Development, editorial board, since 1995
  • Review of World Economics, International Advisory Board, 1995-2015; Economics and Politics, Associate Editor, 1990-1999

Conference organization

  • Silvaplana workshop in political economy, annually since 1989
  • Ariel University biennial conference since 2017 

Visiting academic positions

Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Centre d’Économie de la Sorbonne, Paris. Visiting professor, Master in Economics Program, Spring 2010, 2011, 2012

  • Princeton University, School of Public Policy and International Affairs (formerly Woodrow Wilson School) and Department of Economics, visiting professor of economics, spring semester 1989, fall semester 2004
  • The International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, Fiscal Affairs Department, 2000-2004 intermittent
  • The World Bank, Washington DC, Research Fellow, Socialist Economies Reform Unit, February–September 1990, 1991-1999 intermittent
  • University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), visiting professor, Department of Economics, 1985-1987
  • Australian National University, visiting lecturer, The Faculties (Public Finance), 1979
  • University of Illinois at Urbana, visiting assistant professor of economics, 1973-74

 

    Previous academic positions

    • Macquarie University, Sydney, senior teaching fellow 1968, lecturer with tenure 1969-1970 (resigned June 1970)
    • University of Pennsylvania, Research Fellow, Economics Research Unit (concurrent with graduate studies) 1970-1973
    • Tel-Aviv University, Department of Economics, lecturer 1974-78

     

    -----------------------------------------

    Short-term visitor (Lecture series or research collaboration)

    • Jadavpur University, Department of Economics, Kolkata, February 2020
    • Queensland University of Technology, Department of Economics, December 2019
    • Huazhong University of Science and Technology, School of Public Administration, November 2016
    • University of NSW Graduate School of Business, November 2015
    • University of Queensland, Department of Economics, November-December 2015
    • University of Melbourne, Faculty of Business and Economics, Melbourne Institute, July 2013
    • Monash University, Department of Economics, August 2012
    • University of Freiburg, Institute for Economic Research, M. Ec. Program, 2009
    • Humboldt University, Berlin, July 2007
    • University of Havana, October 2006
    • Cambridge University, Faculty of Economics, January-February 2005
    • Huazhong University of Science and Technology, School of Public Administration, Wuhan, August 2005
    • Kobe University, January-February 2000
    • Nanyang Technological University Singapore Albert Winsemius Professor, August 2000
    • University of Catania, March 2000
    • Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences, Budapest (Corvinus University of Budapest) November 1988
    • Monash University, Center for Excellence, July 1981, July 1982
    • Australian National University, Research School of Social Sciences July 1980

     

     

     

     

    Books

    The Political Economy of Protection

    Arye L. Hillman, 1989. Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur. Reprinted 2001 by Routledge, London, and 2014 by Taylor and Francis (Routledge), London

    A basic principle of the theory of international trade is that free trade is efficient. Possible externalities aside, people can only gain from voluntary exchange. This book considered the reasons why political decision makers choose not to allow free trade. Standard trade theory at the time of writing of the book had used the Musgrave separation between efficiency and distributional policy decisions through lump-sum taxes and transfers. Yet, because such taxes and transfers are generally not available, the efficiency of free trade is compromised by governments seeking distributional objectives through trade policies. Standard trade theory assumed benevolent governments choosing policies to maximize social welfare and explained protectionism as a second-best policy of the social-welfare maximizing governments. This book describes decision makers who have political objectives that are not necessarily consistent with the public interest. Optimality is re-specified as 'optimal for whom?' Since the initial publication of the book, political-economy themes have become common place in the literature on international trade policy.

    Public Finance and Public Policy: A Political Economy Perspective on Responsibilities and Limitations of Government

    Arye L. Hillman, 2019 (3rd edition). Cambridge University Press, New York NY (1st Edition, 2003, 2nd Edition, 2009).

    • Other language editions: Japanese 2006, Keiso Shobo, Tokyo; Chinese 2006, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing; Russian, 2009, Publishing House of the State University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow; Greek, 2013, Papazisis publishers, Athens; Hebrew (electronic)

    Public Finance and Public Policy studies the responsibilities and limitations of government in a market economy. Featuring the same wealth of real-life examples and rigorous but accessible exposition of previous editions, the third edition has been reorganized and fully updated. The traditional public-finance topics are covered of public goods, externalities, unwanted markets, and asymmetric information. The quest for social justice is considered in terms of social insurance, moral hazard, and social mobility. Public choice concepts are applied to evaluating how politics affects societal efficiency and income distribution. Political economy is supplemented by behavioral concepts such as trust, fairness, envy, and hyperbolic discounting. The book is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students taking courses on public policy and government and the market. The book offers an accessible introduction without excessive technicality.

    Edited Volumes

    Arye L. Hillman (Ed.), 1991. Markets and Politicians: Politicized Economic Choice. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston and Dordrecht. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780792391357

    Arye L. Hillman and Branko Milanovic (Eds.), 1992. The Transition from Socialism in Eastern Europe: Domestic Restructuring and Foreign Trade. The World Bank, Washington, D.C. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/1992/09/440179/transition-soc…

    Arye L. Hillman and Željko Bogetić (Eds.), 1995. Financing Government in Transition, Bulgaria: The Political Economy of Tax Policies, Tax Bases, and Tax Evasion. The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1995. Reprinted by Avebury Publishing, Brookfield, Vermont, 1996. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/1995/09/697061/bulgaria-finan…

    Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), 2008. The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK. http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/the-wto-and-the-political-economy-of-trade-…

    Roger D. Congleton, Arye L, Hillman, and Kai Konrad (Eds.), 2008. 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking. Springer, Heidelberg. Volume 1: Theory of Rent Seeking. Volume 2: Applications: Rent Seeking in Practice. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783540791881

    Roger D. Congleton and Arye L, Hillman (Eds.), 2015. Companion to Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/companion-to-the-political-economy-of-rent…

    Publications

    Selected publications by field

    • Political economy of trade and migration
    • Political economy of public policy
    • Policy and behavior
    • Transition from socialism
    • Transition in Israel

    Publications in chronological order


    -------------------------------------------------------------------------

    SELECTED PUBLICATIONS BY TOPIC

     

    I.  POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TRADE AND MIGRATION

    PROTECTIONIST POLICIES

     [1] Arye L. Hillman, 1982. Declining industries and political-support protectionist motives. American Economic Review 72(5), 1180-1187. Reprinted in:

    • The WTO, Safeguards, and Temporary Protection from Imports, Chad Brown (Ed.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2006.
    • The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 43 – 50.
    • Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2 – Applications Rent Seeking in Practice. Roger D. Congleton et al. (Eds.), Springer, Berlin, 2008, pp. 105 – 112.

    [2] James H. Cassing and Arye L. Hillman, 1986. Shifting comparative advantage and senescent industry collapse. American Economic Review 76, 516-523. Reprinted in:

    • The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred J. Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 516 – 523.

    [3] Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1988. Domestic politics, foreign interests and international trade policy. American Economic Review 78, 729-745. Reprinted in:

    • International Trade, J. Peter Neary (Ed.), volume 1, chapter 28, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 1996.
    • The Globalization of the World Economy: Trade and Investment Policy, Thomas Brewer (Ed.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 1999, pp. 470 – 86.
    • The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred J. Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 99 -115.

    Also: Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1994. Domestic politics, foreign interests, and international trade policy: Reply, American Economic Review, 1994, 84, 1476-78.

    [4] Arye L. Hillman, 1989. The Political Economy of Protection. Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur. Reprinted 2001 by Routledge, London. Reprinted 2013 by Taylor and Francis, Abingdon UK.

    http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415753654/

    [5] Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1993. The multinational firm, political competition, and international trade policy. International Economic Review 34, 347 – 63.

    [6] Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman, 2019. The politics of international trade policy. In: Roger D. Congleton, Bernard N. Grofman, and Stefan Voigt (Eds.), volume 2, chapter 32. Oxford Handbook of Public Choice, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, pp. 653-683.

    [7] Klaus Gründler and Arye L. Hillman, 2021. Ambiguous protection. European Journal of Political Economy 68, 102009.

    The prevailing explanation in the 1970s and 1980s for protectionist policies was that socially benevolent governments restricted international trade because of second-best efficiency objectives (the view was promoted by Jagdish Bhagwati of the MIT economics department, who referred to markets as ‘distorted’ and as thereby requiring correction). I showed in [1] how, rather than governments using trade policy to correct inefficiency, motives of political support introduced inefficiency through protectionist policies. In [2], Jim Cassing and I used political determination of trade policy to explain industry collapse in the face of import competition. A paper with Henry Ursprung [3] showed how politically determined trade policy could result in quota rents being assigned to foreign producers. My book [4] The Political Economy of Protection’ reviewed the political influences on trade policy. In [5] we integrated the multinational firm into the political economy of trade policy. An inclusive review of trade policy and politics is contained in [6]. Government regulation of imports is in principle intended to protect consumers: in [7], we examined empirically the extent to which government import regulations globally have protected consumers as intended or have been a political substitute for tariffs and quotas eliminated or reduced in the course of trade liberalization.

     

    TRADE LIBERALIZATION

     [1] Arye L. Hillman, Peter Moser and Ngo Van Long, 1995. Modeling reciprocal trade liberalization: The political-economy and national-welfare perspectives. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik (Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics) 131, 503-515.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman and Peter Moser, 1996. Trade liberalization as politically optimal exchange of market access. In: Matthew Canzoneri, Wilfred Ethier, and Vittorio Grilli (Eds.), The New Transatlantic Economy, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, pp. 295-312.  Reprinted in:

    • The Global Trading System, volume 2, Core Rules and Procedures, Kym Anderson and Bernard Hoekman (Eds.), I. B. Tauris and Co Ltd, London and New York, 2002.
    • The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 290 – 307.

    At the time of the publication of the above papers, the explanation for trade liberalization was that governments were retreating from ‘optimum tariffs’ that had been imposed to improve the terms of trade. We proposed a view of reciprocal trade liberalization as ‘political exchange of market access.’ Through trade negotiations, governments catered to export-industry interests and made the ‘concessions’ of allowing each other’s exporters to sell in their domestic markets.

     

    MIGRATION

     [1] Arye L. Hillman, 1994. The political economy of migration policy. In: Horst Siebert (Ed.), Migration: A Challenge for Europe, J.C.B. Mohr Paul Siebeck, Tübingen, pp. 263 – 282.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman and Avi Weiss, 1999. Beyond international factor movements: Cultural preferences, endogenous policies, and the migration of people, an overview. In: Jaime de Melo, Riccardo Faini, and Klaus Zimmermann (Eds.), Migration: The Controversies and the Evidence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, pp. 76 – 91.

    [3] Arye L. Hillman and Avi Weiss, 1999. A theory of permissible illegal immigration. European Journal of Political Economy 15, 585-604.

    [4] Epstein, Gil, Arye L. Hillman, and Avi Weiss, 1999. Creating illegal immigrants. Journal of Population Economics 12, 3-21.

    [5] Epstein, Gil S., Arye L. Hillman, and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1999. The king never emigrates. Review of Development Economics, 3, 107 – 21. Reprinted in:

    • Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2 – Applications: Rent Seeking in Practice. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, and Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 265 – 79.

    [6] Epstein, Gil S. and Arye L. Arye L. Hillman 2003. Unemployed immigrants and voter sentiment in the welfare state. Journal of Public Economics, 87, 1641-1655. Reprinted in:

    • Seiichi Katayama and Heinrich W. Ursprung (Eds.), International Economic Policies in a Globalized World, Springer, Berlin, 2004, pp. 119 – 32.

    [7] Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 2018. Policies and prizes. European Journal of Political Economy 54, 99-109.

    [8] Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 2021. Immigrants as future voters. Public Choice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-021-00927-5

    The mainstream international trade model describes migration as an ‘international factor movement’ paralleling international movement of capital. There is nothing human about migration in the mainstream model. [1] and [2] make the point that migration involves people. In [3], illegal immigration was described for which immigration laws were not enforced so long as employment of immigrants was confined to particular sectors. In [4] government policy is described that creates illegal immigration. In [5], emigration is an escape from predatory government. In [6], immigrants are placed within the efficiency-wage theory of unemployment. In [7] the prospect of a Nobel Peace Prize explains why a government leader might enact immigration policy that is unpopular with voters. In [7], immigrants being future voters explains why politicians have supported policies that are disadvantageous for their core political constituencies and result in voters’ desertion of traditionally supported political parties.

     

    TRADE EMBARGOS

     [1] Ruth W. Arad and Arye L. Hillman, 1979. Embargo threat, learning and departure from comparative advantage. Journal of International Economics 9, 265 – 75.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 1983. Pricing and depletion of an exhaustible resource when there is anticipation of trade disruption. Quarterly Journal of Economics 98, 215 – 33.

    [3] Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 1985. Monopolistic recycling of oil revenue and intertemporal bias in oil depletion and trade. Quarterly Journal of Economics 100, 597 – 624.

    The above studies were the first analyses of trade policy subject to the threat of boycotts or embargoes. Embargos had been placed on Israel. In [1], learning-by-doing underlies a case for domestic production even if there were to be no future comparative advantage. In [2], a government of a country threatened by embargo on imports of a depletable resource such as oil decides on use of substitutable domestic resources. In [3], an oil cartel has joint monopoly power in the international oil and capital markets.

     

    ENVIRONMENTALISTS AND TRADE POLICY

     [1] Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1992. The influence of environmental concerns on the political determination of international trade policy. In: Kym Anderson and Richard Blackhurst (Eds.), The Greening of World Trade Issues, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor MI, pp. 195 – 220.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1994. Greens, super greens, and international trade policy: Environmental concerns and protectionism. In: Carlo Carraro (Ed.), Trade, Innovation, Environment, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 75 – 108.

    We investigated the influence of environmentalists on political determination of international trade policy. Policy coalitions depend on whether environmentalists are nimbies (not in my backyard) or care about the global environment, and whether pollution is associated with production or consumption.

     

    ASSET MARKETS AND TRADE POLICY

     [1] JoAnne Feeney and Arye L. Hillman, 2004. Trade liberalization through asset markets. Journal of International Economics 64, 151-167. Reprinted in:

    • The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred J. Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 173 - 189.

    [2] JoAnne Feeney and Arye L. Hillman, 2001. Privatization and the political economy of strategic trade policy. International Economic Review 42, 535-556.

    Asset markets had not been included in studies of trade policy. We showed in [1] how income diversification through asset markets moderated support for protectionist policies and provided incentives for trade liberalization. In [2]. We showed how asset markets compromised the case for ‘strategic trade policy’, which had become the favored case for intervention by governments in international markets.

     

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     

    EMPIRICAL TRADE ISSUES

    [1] Arye L. Hillman, 1980. Observations on the relation between "revealed comparative advantage" and comparative advantage as indicated by pre-trade relative prices. Review of World Economics Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 116, 315 – 21.

    • See also: Jeroen Hinloopen and Charles Van Marrewijk, 2008. Empirical relevance of the Hillman condition and comparative advantage. Applied Economics 40, 2313 – 2328.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman and Clark W. Bullard III, 1978. Energy, the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem and U.S. international trade. American Economic Review 68, 96-106. Reprinted in:

    • John Cunningham Wood (Ed.), 1997. Bertil Ohlin: Critical Assessments, Routledge, London.

    In an early paper, I studied ‘revealed comparative advantage’. The measure, which had been proposed by Bela Balassa, has been a popular means of quantifying comparative advantage. [1] showed that ‘revealed comparative advantage’ does not necessarily reveal comparative advantage and derived a sufficient condition for the measure to be valid. The paper was submitted to the journal in which the original paper on ‘revealed comparative advantage’ had been published (the Manchester School). The editor declined to publish the paper on the grounds that revealed comparative advantage was not intended to reveal comparative advantage. Yet the measure was being used as such. I was introduced to the measure by participation in a study of the consequences of the 1988 free-trade agreement between Israel with Europe. The study was conducted with the Kiel Institute. The editor of the journal of the Kiel Institute offered to publish the paper. In [2], we asked whether the U.S., which was importing energy (oil) directly, was also importing energy indirectly through the factor content of international trade. We found a form of the Leontief Paradox. The U.S., which was a direct importer of energy, was exporting energy indirectly.

     

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     

    II. POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PUBLIC POLICY

    CONTESTABLE PRIVILEGE – RENT SEEKING

    [1] Arye L. Hillman and Eliakim Katz, 1984. Risk-averse rent seekers and the social cost of monopoly power. Economic Journal 94, 104-110. Reprinted in:

    • The Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Charles Rowley, Robert Tollison and Gordon Tullock (Eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1988, pp. 81-90.
    • The Economic Analysis of Rent Seeking, Roger Congleton and Robert Tollison (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Oxford, 1995, pp. 243 – 249.
    • The Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Charles K, Rowley, Robert D. Tollison, and Gordon Tullock, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston and Dordrecht, pp. 81-90.
    • Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 97 – 103.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman and Eliakim Katz, 1987. Hierarchical structure and the social costs of bribes and transfers. Journal of Public Economics, 34, 129-142. Reprinted in:

    • The Economics of Corruption and Illegal Markets, Gianluca Fiorentini and Stephano Zamagni (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK 1999. In the series The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics.
    • Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 523 – 536.

    [3] Arye L. Hillman and Dov Samet, 1987. Dissipation of contestable rents by small numbers of contenders. Public Choice, 54, 63-82. Reprinted in:

    • Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 165 – 184.

    See also: Hillman, Arye L. and Dov Samet, 1987. Characterizing equilibrium rent-seeking behavior: A reply to Tullock, Public Choice, 54, 85-87.

    [4] Arye L. Hillman and John Riley, 1989. Politically contestable rents and transfers. Economics and Politics 1, 17-39. Reprinted in:

    • Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 185 – 207.

    [5] Toke Aidt and Arye L. Hillman, 2008. Enduring rents. European Journal of Political Economy 24, 454 – 53.

     

    ‘Rent seeking’ is an important part of political economy. The social cost of public policies includes the resources and time used in seeking benefits through political decisions. This point was made by Gordon Tullock (Western Economic Journal 1967). Building on his observations, [1] introduced risk aversion and [2] considered the link between bribes and rent seeking in hierarchical administrative structures. In [3], we introduced a contest-success function for which the highest outlay made secured the rent (also called an all-pay auction) and showed that on average the value of an observed rent was equal to the unobservable resources used in contesting the rent. This is a useful result because the value of an observed rent can be used to infer the unobservable values of resources used in contesting the rent. [4] generalized the model. In [5] we accounted for the persistence of rents over time and the possibility that through policy changes rents may cease to exist.

     

    DEVELOPMENT FAILURE

    [1] Arye L. Hillman, 2004. Nietzschean development failures. Public Choice 119(3), 263 – 280.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman, 2007. Democracy and low-income countries. In José Casas Pardo and Pedro Schwartz (Eds.), Public Choice and Challenges of Democracy, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, U.K., pp. 277 – 294.

    [3] Arye L. Hillman and Eva Jenkner, 2004. User payments for basic education in low-income countries. In: Sanjeev Gupta, Benedict Clements, and Gabriela Inchauste (Eds.), 2004. Helping countries Develop: The Role of Fiscal Policy, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, pp. 233 – 264.

    • Working Paper no 02/182, November 2002, International Monetary Fund, Washington D.C.
    • Non-technical version: How to pay for basic education: Poor children in poor countries, Economic Issues 33, 2004, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC.

    [4] Emanuele Baldacci, Arye L. Hillman, and Naoko Kojo, 2004. Growth, governance, and fiscal-policy transmission channels in low-income countries. European Journal of Political Economy 20, 517 – 549. Reprinted in:

    • Sanjeev Gupta, Benedict Clements, and Gabriela Inchauste (Eds.), 2004. Helping countries Develop: The Role of Fiscal Policy, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, pp. 67 – 104.
    • Revised version of Working Paper no 03/237, December 2003, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC.

    Why, given the resources that have provided through aid to poor countries, has there been recurring  development failure? [1] describes a Nietzschean society, named after the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in which the strong subjugate the weak. The strong control government. Corruption could not be said to be present, because absence of the rule of law that could defines corruption as illegal. [2] describes the impediment to development of elites in poor countries not wanting a middle class that would seek democratic accountability and transparency from government. In an IMF-sponsored study [3], we looked at self-financing of schooling by poor parents in poor countries. The parents were seeking to escape ineffective government schools, or were self-financing schools when there were no government schools. The NGO Oxfam had criticized such self-financed schools on the grounds that it was the responsibility of the government to provide adequate schooling. This was an ideologically motivated non-sequitur. Oxfam did not complain about the privileged elites sending their children to expensive private schools at home or abroad. They complained when parents contributed to self-financing of the schooling of children by bringing a chicken for the teacher. They criticized the parents for not relying on benevolent government in corruption-ridden countries. In another IMF-sponsored study [4], we looked at the relation between budgetary deficits and economic growth in the poorest countries in the world and found that economic growth increased when budgetary spending contracted. This could not have been due to an inverse crowding-out effect whereby lower government borrowing decreased interest rates and so increased investment – because these countries did not have effective domestic capital markets. We concluded that lower government spending increased growth because of a reduction in government bureaucracy. Rent seeking by officials that hampered growth declined.

     

    SHARING AND SELF-FINANCING

     [1] Elhanan Helpman, and Arye L. Hillman, 1977. Two remarks on optimal club size. Economica 44, 293 – 96.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman and Peter Swan, 1979. Club participation under uncertainty. Economics Letters 4, 307–12.

    [3] Arye L. Hillman and Peter Swan, 1983. Participation rules for Pareto-optimal clubs. Journal of Public Economics 20, 55 – 76.

    James Buchanan (Economica 1965) had introduced the idea of voluntary sharing and self-financing of ‘public goods’ through what he called ‘clubs’. He explained that contrary to the nomenclature of Paul Samuelson (Review of Economics and Statistics 1954), ‘public goods’ could be voluntarily provided without the need for public-sector involvement. Yew-Kwang Ng (Economics 1973, 1974) extended Buchanan’s model to cases in which people were excluded from clubs because of crowding (not discrimination). [1] qualified previous conclusions. [2] and [3] studied the exclusion case, showing that equality of opportunity through sale of lottery tickets for inclusion provided greater revenue than selling admission.

     

    TAX-BASE COMPETITION

    A literature describes governments competing for tax bases, or competing to tax the same activity or the same source of income. Ostensibly [1] is the first paper describing tax competition in a federal system of government.

    [1] James H. Cassing and Arye L. Hillman, 1982. State-federal resource tax rivalry. Economic Record 58, 235 – 241.

     

    ECONOMIC FREEDOM

    [1] Arye L. Hillman and Niklas Potrafke, 2018. Economic freedom and religion: An empirical investigation. Public Finance Review 46(2), 249-275. Special issue on ‘Economic Freedom and Race/Ethnicity’, Gary Hoover editor. CESifo working paper no. 6017 (July 2016)

    Does religion influence economic freedom? Using a cross-sectional dataset for 137 countries averaged over the period 2001-2010, in [1] we studied the relation between the three religions derived from Judaism – Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam – and economic freedom. The Protestant ethic requires economic freedom, suggesting a prediction of greater economic freedom in Protestant societies. Islam means ‘submission’, suggesting restrictions on economic freedom. Our empirical estimates confirmed that Protestantism is most conducive to economic freedom, with Islam least conducive, with Catholicism in between.

     

    SUPREME VALUES

    [1] Raphael Franck, Arye L. Hillman, and Miriam Krausz, 2005. Public safety and the moral dilemma in the defense against terror. Defense and Peace Economics 16(5), 347 – 364.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman, 2007. Economic and security consequences of supreme values. Public Choice 30, 259 – 280.

    • Also published as: An economic perspective on radical Islam. In Hillel Frisch and Efraim Inbar (Eds.), 2008. Radical Islam and International Security: Challenges and Responses, Routledge, London, pp. 44 – 69.

    [3] Arye L. Hillman, 2019. Harming a favored side: An anomaly with supreme values and good intentions. Public Choice. 186, 3-4, 275-286. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-019-00750-z.

    Peter Bernholz has studied the supreme values that underlie totalitarian government. The supreme values are defined by an ideological ranking of objectives that does not allow substitution among objectives (preferences are lexographic). The implications is that, when confronting an adversary that has a supreme-value ideology, no prospect of compromise should be expected. Soft diplomacy and persuasion cannot be effective. [1] studied the moral dilemma of providing public safety when the identity of terrorists is unknown. [2] attributed low incomes to supreme values that place objectives of conquest above economic development. In [3], supreme values explain otherwise anomalous behavior of using an own population as human shields.

      

    PROPHETS AND CONSTITUTIONS

    [1] Hillman, Arye L., 2009. Hobbes and the prophet Samuel on leviathan government. Public Choice 141, 1 – 4.

    [2] Hillman, Arye L., 2009. Hobbes and Samuel: reply (to Geoffrey Brennan). Public Choice 141, 13 – 15.

    [3] Hillman, Arye L., 2020. Constitutional Political economy: Ulysses and the prophet Jonah. Public Choice.

    Thomas Hobbes in his book Leviathan (1651), sought to justify a leviathan monarch with all-encompassing power by the request to the prophet Samuel by the tribes of Israel to have a king. In [1] I point out Hobbes misrepresented Samuel, who rather than supporting a Leviathan, warned ‘you will regret the day that you appointed a king’. Hobbes’ father was a clergyman and Hobbes had access to the bible, including in English. A debate ensued in [2].

    The story of Ulysses and the sirens is used as representative of the field of constitutional political economy. Indeed Ulysses adorns the cover of the field’s journal. I compare the stories of Ulysses and the prophet Jonah as constitutional allegories. Ulysses provides privileged personal benefits for an autocratic ruler at the expense of social costs that historically have often entailed much more than placing wax in sailors' ears. The story of Jonah is consistent with exit of leaders and politicians when the social cost from them staying on exceeds whatever social benefits their rule may provide.

     

    ---------------------------------------------

     

    III. POLICY AND BEHAVIOR

    EXPRESSIVE BEHAVIOR

    [1] Arye L. Hillman, 2010. Expressive behavior in economics and politics. European Journal of Political Economy 26, 404 – 419.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman, 2011. Expressive voting and identity: evidence from a case study of a group of U.S. voters. Public Choice 148, 249-257.

    [3] Arye L. Hillman, Kfir Metsuyanim, and Niklas Potrafke, 2015. Democracy with group identity. European Journal of Political Economy, 40(Part B), 274-287.

    Expressive voting has been proposed to explain the paradox of voting, which is that people vote when their vote is not decisive. [1] generalized expressive behavior to include acts of expressive rhetoric and expressive giving that, like voting, confirm an identity that need not be consistent with actual behavior]. An expressive-policy trap emerges when a majority of non-decisive voters expressively support a policy that each voter, because of actual adverse consequences, would veto if decisive. I was influenced by voting and rhetoric in Israel. In the face of terror, voters voted for ‘peace’, not because they believed necessarily that peace was achievable, but because they wished to identify themselves as seekers of peace. A natural experiment of voting in the U.S. provides evidence on how identity can override self-interest [2]. When group identity predetermines how people vote, democracy is usually compromised because there can be no loyal opposition waiting a turn in government. In [3], we showed how in local-government elections in Israel sustained democracy has been consistent with group identity.

     

    PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

    [1] Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2016. Academic exclusion: Some experiences. Public Choice, 167(1), 1-20.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman, 2013. Economic and behavioral foundations of prejudice. In Charles Asher Small (Ed.), Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Leiden, Netherlands, and Boston, MA, pp. 51-67. Available at:

    file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/9789004265561_webready_content_text%20(1).pdf.

    [3] Raphael N. Becker, Arye L. Hillman, Niklas Potrafke, Alexander H. Schwemmer, 2015. The preoccupation of the United Nations with Israel: Evidence and theory. Review of International Organizations 10(4), 413-437.

    [4] Arye L. Hillman and Niklas Potrafke, 2015. The UN Goldstone Report and Retraction: An empirical investigation. Public Choice 163(3), 247-266.

    Absence of objective criteria for the evaluation of economic research allows subjectivism and bias in peer evaluation. The bias can result in prejudicial academic exclusion. In [1], we studied three cases of academic exclusion – of Alexander Del Mar, J.A. Hobson, and Gordon Tullock, all of whom challenged mainstream views of their time. After initial academic exclusion, Alexander Del Mar, J.A. Hobson, and Gordon Tullock were in due course recognized for the originality and the merits of their ideas. Each however incurred personal costs because of prejudice.

    The literature on prejudice against Jews provides extensive historical accounts of ill-will. There has been less attention directed at explaining the foundations of the prejudice. In [2] I show how prejudice is explained by behavioral concepts of envy, fear, and cognitive dissonance. Prejudice also appears related to whether luck or effort is perceived to be the primary determinant of personal success.

    In [3] and [4], we studied prejudice at the United Nations. Data on UN General Assembly resolutions between January 1990 and June 2015 reveal that Israel appears in 65 percent of resolutions in which a country is named. Resolutions are perennial and consistently critical. [3] explains UN voting as intending to deflect attention from autocrats’ violations of human rights of their peoples. [4] found significant differences in voting on the UN Goldstone Report between democracies and autocracies: the Report involved in then end whether self-defense against state-sponsored terror was regarded as a war crime.

    ------------------------------------------------------------

     

    IV. RESEARCH AT THE WORLD BANK - TRANSITION FROM SOCIALISM

    Edited volumes

    Arye L. Hillman and Branko Milanovic (Eds.), 1992. The Transition from Socialism in Eastern Europe: Domestic Restructuring and Foreign Trade. The World Bank, Washington, D.C.

    http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/1992/09/440179/transition-socialism-eastern-europe-domestic-restructuring-foreign-trade

    Arye L. Hillman and Željko Bogetić (Eds.), 1995. Financing Government in Transition, Bulgaria: The Political Economy of Tax Policies, Tax Bases, and Tax Evasion. The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1995. Reprinted by Avebury Publishing, Brookfield, Vermont, 1996.

    http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/1995/09/697061/bulgaria-financing-government-transition-political-economy-tax-policies-tax-bases-tax-evasion

    Research papers

    [1] Arye L. Hillman, 1992. Progress with privatization. Journal of Comparative Economics 16, 733 – 749.

    [2] Arye L. Hillman, 1994. The transition from socialism: An overview from a political-economy perspective. European Journal of Political Economy 10, 191 – 225. Special issue, Festschrift in honor of Peter Bernholz, edited by Manfred Gärtner and Heinrich W. Ursprung.

    [3] Alan Gelb, Arye L. Hillman, and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1998. Rents as distractions: Why the exit from transition is prolonged. In: Nicolas C. Baltas, George Demopoulos, and Joseph Hassid (Eds.), Economic Interdependence and Cooperation in Europe, Springer, Heidelberg, 21 – 38.

    [4] Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2000. Political culture and economic decline. European Journal of Political Economy 16, 189-213. Reprinted in:

    • Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2 – Applications: Rent Seeking in Practice. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 219 – 243.

    [5] Arye L. Hillman, 2002. On the way to the Promised Land: ten years in the wilderness without Moses. Published in Russian (translated by Mark Levin). Economics and Mathematical Methods - Journal of the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences 38, 78 – 94.

    [6] Arye L. Hillman, 2003. Interpretations of transition. In: Nauro F. Campos and Jan Fidrmuc (Eds.), Political Economy of Transition and Development: Institutions, Politics, and Policies, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 23 – 40.

    [7]  Arye L. Hillman, 2005. Political institutions, jurisdictional boundaries, and rent creation. Keio Economic Studies, 42 nos. 1-2, 25 – 37. Special issue in honor of Professor Michihiro Ohyama, edited by Wilfred J. Ethier and Makoto Yano.

    The collapse of communism around 1990 was a momentous historical event that merited study. I was fortunate in having been invited in 1990 for an extended stay at the World Bank when the unit focusing on the transition from socialism was initiated and in being able to visit and study numerous countries in transition. The political-economy perspective explained much of what happened. In various instances, political self-interest predominated and often grand theft of state property (called privatization) took place, when the focus of external policy advice provided to the governments (the politicians) in the transition economies was on how to benevolently improve economic outcomes ([1], [2]). The term ‘transition’ implies a process with an endpoint but the ‘transition’ from socialism remained an extended ongoing process. I suggested an analogy in [6] with the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly. In the case of the butterfly, transition is not observed, but a beautiful creature predictably emerges. Transition from socialism was observable but the outcome was not predictable and need not be beautiful. In [7], I studied why the transition from socialism had resulted in the creation of numerous states when tendencies in Europe were towards a unified government jurisdiction. Rather than contesting privileges and benefits bestowed by a central government, local political leaders could do better controlling their own populations directly. Again at the forefront were political privileges and rents [3]. In [5] I pointed out that the transition was not similar to Moses taking his people to the Promised Land. In [4] w used a model with political insiders and outsiders to show how transition failed when prior political culture based on political dispensation of privilege and rents was retained.

    -------------------------------------------------------------

    V. TRANSITION IN ISRAEL

     [1] Arye L. Hillman, 1988. Impediments to a competitive environment in Israel. Presented at Symposium on American-Israel Economic Relations in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of the State of Israel, New York (June 1988). With preface added January 2016.

    Available from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Arye_Hillman?origin=publication_li…

    [2] Arye L. Hillman 1991. Liberalization dilemmas. In Arye L. Hillman (Ed.), Markets and Politicians: Politicized Economic Choice, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht and Boston, chapter 10, pp. 189 – 207.

    Around 1988 a transition from socialism began in Israel. The foundations for the existence of the state of Israel were laid by the kibbutz system, which allowed defense in a hostile environment and also avoided low market wages through labor cooperatives. Motivation overcame the moral hazard that resulted in the collapse of collectivism and cooperative systems elsewhere. Collective ownership in Israel went far beyond the agricultural kibbutz. Nearly all means of production were collectively owned. In [2] I described the social dilemmas that arose because of inconsistency of socialist organization and import competition. [1] described the economy-wide structure of collective ownership that would have to change if transition to a market-economy were to take place. The paper clearly placed me outside of the socialist establishment. There were few other economists out there with me. There were personal costs because of benefits forgone from socialist patronage including consulting contracts and membership of boards of directors of the socialist enterprises (owned not by the state but effectively by the Labor Party). Hayek was insightful in observing that the motive for socialist organization of industry and society was megalomania of politicians and public administrators who desire to control others. The economy of Israel made a successful transition from socialism to become a high-income market economy.

     

     

    ALL PUBLICATIONS (CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

    BOOKS

    Arye L. Hillman, 1989/2001/2013. The Political Economy of Protection. Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur. Reprinted 2001 Routledge, London; 2013 by Taylor and Francis (Routledge), London https://www.crcpress.com/The-Political-Economy-of-Protection/Hillman/p/…

    Arye L. Hillman, 2003/2009/2019 (3rd edition). Public Finance and Public Policy: A Political Economy Perspective on Responsibilities and Limitations of Government, Cambridge University Press, New York NY

     

    EDITED VOLUMES

    Arye L. Hillman (Ed.), 1991. Markets and Politicians: Politicized Economic Choice. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston and Dordrecht.

    Arye L. Hillman and Branko Milanovic (Eds.), 1992. The Transition from Socialism in Eastern Europe: Domestic Restructuring and Foreign Trade. The World Bank, Washington, D.C.

    Arye L. Hillman and Željko Bogetić (Eds.), 1995. Financing Government in Transition, Bulgaria: The Political Economy of Tax Policies, Tax Bases, and Tax Evasion. The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1995. Reprinted by Avebury Publishing, Brookfield, Vermont, 1996.

    Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), 2008. The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK.

    Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, and Kai Konrad (Eds.), 2008. 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking. Springer, Heidelberg. Volume 1: Theory of Rent Seeking. Volume 2: Applications: Rent Seeking in Practice

    Roger D. Congleton and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), 2015. Companion to Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK.

     

    PRESENTATION

    Arye L. Hillman, 2021. The 18th century Georgia new-world egalitarian project: Political economy with conceit, deception, and ethics. Adam Smith seminar (November 29, 2021).

     

    JOURNAL ARTICLES

    2020-22

    • Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 2022. Immigrants as future voters. Public Choice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-021-00927-5
    • Klaus Gründler and Arye L. Hillman, 2021. Ambiguous protection. European Journal of Political Economy 68(2021) 102009.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2020. Investigation in search of truth (introduction to a special issue in honor of the 90th birthday of Peter Bernholz). Public Choice, 186(3-4), 223-228.
    • Toke Aidt, Arye L. Hillman, and Liu Qijun, 2020. Who takes bribes and how much? Evidence from the China Corruption Conviction Databank. World Development 133 (September) 104985.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2020. Constitutional political economy: Ulysses and the prophet Jonah. Public Choice, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-020-00865-8

     

    2017-2019

    • Arye L. Hillman, 2019. Harming a favored side: An anomaly with supreme values and good intentions. Public Choice 186, 3-4, 275-286.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 2018. Policies and prizes. European Journal of Political Economy 54, 99-109. Special issue on The Political Economy of Public Policy.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Niklas Potrafke, 2018. Economic freedom and religion: An empirical investigation. Public Finance Review 46(2), 249-275. Special issue on Economic Freedom and Race/Ethnicity, Gary Hoover editor.

     

    2015-2017

    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2016. Academic exclusion: Some experiences. Public Choice, 67, 1-20.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2016. Where are the rent seekers? Constitutional Political Economy 27(2), 124-141. Special issue in memory of Gordon Tullock.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Niklas Potrafke, 2015. The UN Goldstone Report and Retraction: An empirical investigation. Public Choice 163(3), 247-266.
    • Raphael N. Becker, Arye L. Hillman, Niklas Potrafke, and Alexander H. Schwemmer, 2015. The preoccupation of the United Nations with Israel: Evidence and theory. Review of International Organizations 10(4), 413-437.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2015. Rents and international trade policy. In: Roger D. Congleton and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Companion to Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, chapter 12, pp. 187-202.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2015. Rent seeking as political economy. In: Roger D. Congleton and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Companion to Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, chapter 2, pp. 10-16.
    • Arye L. Hillman, Kfir Metsuyanim, and Niklas Potrafke, 2015. Democracy with group identity. European Journal of Political Economy 40, 274-287. In special issue on Behavioral Political Economy.

     

    2010-2014

    • Christian Bjørnskov, Željko Bogetić, Arye L. Hillman, and Milenko Popović, 2014. Trust and identity in a small post-socialist post-crisis society. Europe and Central Asia Region, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, Policy Research Working Paper 6828, The World Bank, Washington DC.
    • https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/17713/WPS682…
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2013. Economic and behavioral foundations of prejudice. In Charles S. Small (Ed.), Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity. Leiden, Netherlands, and Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, pp. 51-67.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2011. Expressive voting and identity: evidence from a case study of a group of U.S. voters. Public Choice 148, 249-257.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2010. Expressive behavior in economics and politics. European Journal of Political Economy 26, 404 – 419.

     

    2007-2009

    • Arye L. Hillman, 2009. Hobbes and the prophet Samuel on leviathan government. Public Choice 141, 1 – 4.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2008. Globalization and social justice. Singapore Economic Review 53, 173 - 189. Singapore Economic Review Public Lecture, September 2007.
    • Toke Aidt and Arye L. Hillman, 2008. Enduring rents. European Journal of Political Economy 24, 454 – 53.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Miriam Krausz, 2007. Directed credits and corruption. In Rahul Gupta and Santap Sanhari Mishra (Eds.), Corruption: The Causes and Combating Strategies. The Icfai University Press, Hyderabad, pp. 73-81.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2007. Economic and security consequences of supreme values. Public Choice 30, 259 – 280. Also published as: An economic perspective on radical Islam. In Hillel Frisch and Efraim Inbar (Eds.), Radical Islam and International Security: Challenges and Responses, Routledge, London, 2008, pp. 44 – 69.
    • Arye L. Hillman 2007. Democracy and low-income countries. In José Casas Pardo and Pedro Schwartz (Eds.), Public Choice and Challenges of Democracy, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, U.K., pp. 277 – 294.

     

    2003-2005

    • Arye L. Hillman, 2005. Globalization and the political economy of international trade policy. In: Sisira Jayasuriya (Ed.),  Trade Policy Reforms and Development: Essays in Honor of Professor Peter Lloyd, Volume II, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, U.K., pp. 3 – 22.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2005. Political institutions, jurisdictional boundaries, and rent creation. Keio Economic Studies, 42(1/2), 25 – 37. Special issue in honor of Professor Michihiro Ohyama, edited by Wilfred J. Ethier and Makoto Yano.
    • Raphael Franck, Arye L. Hillman, and Miriam Krausz, 2005. Public safety and the moral dilemma in the defense against terror. Defense and Peace Economics 16(5), 347 – 364. (CEPR DP 4736, November 2004).
    • JoAnne Feeney and Arye L. Hillman, 2004. Trade liberalization through asset markets. Journal of International Economics 64, 151-167. Reprinted in: Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), 2008. The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, pp. 173 - 189.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Eva Jenkner, 2004. User payments for basic education in low-income countries. In: Sanjeev Gupta, Benedict Clements, and Gabriela Inchauste (Eds.), 2004. Helping countries Develop: The Role of Fiscal Policy, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, pp. 233 – 264. Working Paper no 02/182, November 2002, International Monetary Fund, Washington D.C. Non-technical version: How to pay for basic education: Poor children in poor countries, Economic Issues 33, 2004, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2004. Nietzschean development failures. Public Choice 119, 263 – 280. Revised version of: Poverty, inequality, and unethical behavior of the strong. Working Paper no 00/187, November 2000, International Monetary Fund, Washington D.C.
    • Emanuele Baldacci, Arye L. Hillman, and Naoko Kojo, 2004. Growth, governance, and fiscal-policy transmission channels in low-income countries. European Journal of Political Economy 20, 517 – 549. Revised version of Working Paper no 03/237, December 2003, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC. Reprinted in: Sanjeev Gupta, Benedict Clements, and Gabriela Inchauste (Eds.), 2004. Helping countries Develop: The Role of Fiscal Policy, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, pp. 67 – 104.
    • Arye L. Hillman, Ngo Van Long, and Antoine Soubeyran, 2003. Lobbying for tariff protection and allocation of entrepreneurial resources. In: Seiichi Katayama and Kaz Miyagiwa (Eds.), New Developments in International Trade: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe, pp. 129 – 46.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2003. Interpretations of transition. In: Nauro F. Campos and Jan Fidrmuc (Eds.), Political Economy of Transition and Development: Institutions, Politics, and Policies, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 23 – 40.

     

    2000-2002

    • Arye L. Hillman, 2002. Immigration and intergenerational transfers. In: Horst Siebert (Ed.), Economic Policy for Aging Societies. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht and Boston, pp. 213 – 26.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2002. On the way to the Promised Land: ten years in the wilderness without Moses. Published in Russian (translated by Mark Levin). In Economics and Mathematical Methods - Journal of the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences 38, 78 – 94.
    • Chen, Kang, Arye L. Hillman, and Gu Qingyang, 2002. Fiscal re-centralization and behavioral change of local governments: from the helping hand to the grabbing hand. China Economic Quarterly 2, 111-130.
    • Chen, Kang, Arye L. Hillman, and Gu Qingyang, 2002. From the helping hand to the grabbing hand: Fiscal federalism in China. In: John Wong and Lu Ding (Eds.), China's Economy into the New Century: Structural Issues and Problems. World Scientific, Singapore, pp. 193 – 215.
    • JoAnne Feeney and Arye L. Hillman, 2001. Privatization and the political economy of strategic trade policy. International Economic Review 42, 535-556.
    • Arye L. Hillman, Ngo Van Long, and Antoine Soubeyran, 2001. Protection, lobbying, and market structure. Journal of International Economics 54, 383 – 409.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2000. Political culture and economic decline. European Journal of Political Economy, 16, 189-213. Reprinted in: Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), 2008. Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Springer: Heidelberg, pp. 219 – 243.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Otto Swank, 2000. Why political culture should be in the lexicon of economics. European Journal of Political Economy 16, 1 – 4.

     

    1997-1999

    • Arye L. Hillman, 1999. Political culture and the political economy of central bank independence. In Mario Blejer and Marko Škreb (Eds.), Major Issues in Central Banking, Monetary Policies, and Implications for Transition Economies, Springer: Heidelberg, pp. 73 – 86.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1999. Foreign investment and endogenous protection with protectionist quid pro quo. Economics and Politics 11, 1 – 12.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Avi Weiss, 1999. A theory of permissible illegal immigration. European Journal of Political Economy 15, 585-604.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Avi Weiss, 1999. Beyond international factor movements: Cultural preferences, endogenous policies, and the migration of people, an overview. In: Jaime de Melo, Riccardo Faini, and Klaus Zimmermann (Eds.), Migration: The Controversies and the Evidence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, pp. 76 – 91.
    • Epstein, Gil, Arye L. Hillman, and Avi Weiss, 1999. Creating illegal immigrants. Journal of Population Economics 12, 3-21.
    • Epstein, Gil, Arye L. Hillman, and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1999. The king never emigrates. Review of Development Economics 3, 107 – 21. Reprinted in: Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), 2008. Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2 – Applications: Rent Seeking in Practice. Springer: Heidelberg 2008, pp. 265 – 79.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1999. The trials and tribulations of banking in transition economies: A political economy perspective. In: Mario Blejer and Marko Škreb (Eds.), Financial Sector Transformation: Lessons from Economies in Transition, Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 132 – 149.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1999. What is special about endogenous international trade policy in transition economies? In: Mario Blejer and Marko Škreb (Eds.), Balance of Payments, Exchange Rates, and Competitiveness in Transition Economies, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston and Dordrecht, 255 – 282.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1998. Political economy and political correctness. Public Choice 96, 219-239. Presidential Address, European Public Choice Society, Prague, April 1997. Reprinted in: Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), 2008, Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2–Applications: Rent Seeking in Practice. Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 791 – 811.
    • Alan Gelb, Arye L. Hillman, and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1998. Rents as distractions: Why the exit from transition is prolonged. In: Nicolas C. Baltas, George Demopoulos, and Joseph Hassid (Eds.), Economic Interdependence and Cooperation in Europe, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 21 – 38. Paper for: Rents and the transition, World Development Report Background Paper, The World Bank, Washington D.C., April 1996.
    • Arye L. Hillman, Manuel Hinds, Branko Milanovic, and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1997. Protectionist pressures and enterprise restructuring: The political economy of trade policy in transition. In: Assaf Razin and Hans-Jürgen Vosgerau (Eds.), Trade and Tax Policy, Inflation and Exchange Rates, , Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 215 – 243.

     

    1995-1997

    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1996. The political economy of trade liberalization in the transition. European Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) 40, 783 - 794.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1996. Western economic theory and the transition: The public choice perspective. Economics and Mathematical Methods (Journal of the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences) 32, 77-90. In Russian, translated by Mark Levin. Published in English in: Karl-Josef Koch and Klaus Jaeger (Eds.), 1998. Trade, Growth, and Economic Policy in Open Economies: Essays in Honor of Hans-Jürgen Vosgerau, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 351 – 367.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Peter Moser, 1996. Trade liberalization as politically optimal exchange of market access. In: Matthew Canzoneri, Wilfred Ethier, and Vittorio Grilli (Eds.), The New Transatlantic Economy, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, pp. 295-312. Reprinted in: Kym Anderson and Bernard Hoekman (Eds.), The Global Trading System, volume 2, Core Rules and Procedures, , I.B. Tauris and Co Ltd, London and New York, 2002; In Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, , Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 290 – 307.
    • Arye L. Hillman, Peter Moser and Ngo Van Long, 1995. Modeling reciprocal trade liberalization: The political-economy and national-welfare perspectives. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik (Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics) 131, 503-515.
    • Arye L. Hillman, Lubomir Mitov and R. Kyle Peters, 1995. The private sector, state enterprises, and informal economic activity. In Željko Bogetić and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Financing Government in Transition, Bulgaria: The Political Economy of Tax Policies, Tax Bases, and Tax Evasion, The World Bank, Washington DC., pp. 47 – 70. 

     

    1993-1994

    • Željko Bogetić and Arye L. Hillman, 1994. The tax base in the transition: The case of Bulgaria. Policy Research Working Paper number 1267, The World Bank, Washington DC. Published in: Communist Economies and Economic Transformation 1994, 6, 267-282. Updated as: Bogetić, Željko and Arye L. Hillman, 1995. The choice of a tax system. In Željko Bogetić and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Financing Government in Transition, Bulgaria: The Political Economy of Tax Policies Tax Bases, and Tax Evasion. The World Bank, Washington DC., pp. pp. 33 – 46.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1994. The transition from socialism: An overview from a political-economy perspective. European Journal of Political Economy 10, 191 – 225. Special issue, festschrift in honor of Peter Bernholz, edited by Manfred Gärtner and Heinrich W. Ursprung.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1994. Greens, supergreens, and international trade policy: Environmental concerns and protectionism. In: Carlo Carraro (Ed.), Trade, Innovation, Environment, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 75 – 108.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1994. The political economy of migration policy. In: Horst Siebert (Ed.), Migration: A Challenge for Europe, J.C.B. Mohr Paul Siebeck, Tübingen, pp. 263 – 282.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1993. The multinational firm, political competition, and international trade policy. International Economic Review 34, 347 – 63.
    • Arye L. Hillman 1993. Socialist clubs: A perspective on the transition. European Journal of Political Economy, 1993, 9, 307 – 319.

     

    1990-1992

    • Arye L. Hillman, 1992. Progress with privatization. Journal of Comparative Economics 16, 733 – 749.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Adi Schnytzer, 1992. Creating the reform-resistant dependent economy: Socialist comparative advantage, enterprise incentives and the CMEA. In: Arye L. Hillman and Branko Milanovic (Eds.), The Transition from Socialism in Eastern Europe: Domestic Restructuring and Foreign Trade, The World Bank, Washington, DC, chapter 10, pp. 243 – 262.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1992. The transition from socialist trade to European integration. In: The EC after 1992 - Perspectives from the Outside, Silvio Borner and Herbert Grubel (Eds.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, pp. 61 – 79.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1992. The transition from the CMEA system of international trade. In: Trials of Transition: Economic Reform in the Former Communist Bloc, Michael Karen and Gur Offer (Eds.), Westview Press, Boulder, pp. 271 – 289.
    • Arye L. Hillman, Istvan Abel, and David Tarr, 1992. The government budgetary consequences of reform of the CMEA system of international trade: The case of Hungary. In: Arye L. Hillman and Branko Milanovic (Eds.), The Transition from Socialism in Eastern Europe: Domestic Restructuring and Foreign Trade, The World Bank, Washington, DC, chapter 12, 277-293.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1992. International trade policy in Israel: Another model, Public Choice, 1992, 74, 355-360.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1992. The influence of environmental concerns on the political determination of international trade policy. In: Kym Anderson and Richard Blackhurst (Eds.), The Greening of World Trade Issues, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor MI,  pp. 195 – 220. Invited paper for a conference organized at the GATT (replaced by the WTO).
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1992. International trade policy: Benevolent dictators and optimizing politicians. Public Choice 74, 1-15. Plenary lecture, European Public Choice Society Annual Conference, Meersburg, April 1990.
    • Arye L. Hillman 1991. Liberalization dilemmas. In Markets and Politicians: Politicized Economic Choice, Arye L. Hillman (Ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, chapter 10, pp. 189 – 207.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1991. Market structure, politics, and protection. In: Elhanan Helpman and Assaf Razin (Eds.), International Trade and Trade Policy, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, pp. 118 – 40.
    • James H. Cassing and Arye L. Hillman, 1991. Equalizing the cost of success: Equitable graduation rules and the Generalized System of Preferences. Journal of International Economic Integration 6, 40-51.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1991. Some problems of statistical measurement of economic activity in the transition from planned socialism. In: Petr O. Aven (Ed.), Economies in Transition: Statistical Measures Now and in the Future, International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 1991, 69-78.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1990. Protectionist policies as the regulation of international industry. Public Choice 67, 101-110.

     

    1988-1989

    • Arye L. Hillman, 1989. Resolving the puzzle of welfare-reducing trade diversion: A prisoners' dilemma interpretation. Oxford Economic Papers 41, 452-455.
    • Arye L. Hillman and John Riley, 1989. Politically contestable rents and transfers. Economics and Politics 1, 17-39. Reprinted in: Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 185 – 207.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1988. Tariff-revenue transfers to protectionist interests: Compensation for reduced protection or supplementary reward for successful lobbying? Public Choice 58, 169 - 172.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1988. Domestic politics, foreign interests and international trade policy. American Economic Review 78, 729-745. Reprinted in: International Trade, J. Peter Neary (Ed.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 1996, chapter 26; The Globalization of the World Economy: Trade and Investment Policy, Thomas Brewer (Ed.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 1999, pp. 470 – 86; The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 99 -115
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1988. Impediments to a competitive environment in Israel. Presented at Symposium on American-Israel Economic Relations in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of the State of Israel, New York (June 1988). Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289460199_Impediments_to_a_competitive_environment_in_Israel_1988_with_preface_2016

     

    1986-1987

    • Arye L. Hillman, Eliakim Katz, and Jacob Rosenberg, 1987. Workers as insurance: Anticipated government intervention and factor demand. Oxford Economic Papers, 39, 813-820. Reprinted in: The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. pp. 585–592.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Dov Samet, 1987. Dissipation of contestable rents by small numbers of contenders. Public Choice, 54, 63-82. Reprinted in: Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 165 – 184.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Eliakim Katz, 1987. Hierarchical structure and the social costs of bribes and transfers. Journal of Public Economics, 34, 129-142. Reprinted in: The Economics of Corruption and Illegal Markets, Gianluca Fiorentini and Stephano Zamagni (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK 1999; in Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 523 – 536.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Eliakim Katz, 1986. Domestic uncertainty and foreign dumping. Canadian Journal of Economics 19, 403-416.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Adi Schnytzer, 1986. Illegal activities and purges in a Soviet-type economy: A rent-seeking perspective. International Review of Law and Economics, 6, 87-99. Reprinted in: Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai A. Konrad (Eds.). Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2 – Applications: Rent Seeking in Practice., Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 545 – 557.
    • James H. Cassing, Arye L. Hillman, and Ngo Van Long, 1986. Risk aversion, terms of trade variability, and social consensus trade policy. Oxford Economic Papers 38, 234-242.
    • James H. Cassing and Arye L. Hillman, 1986. Shifting comparative advantage and senescent industry collapse. American Economic Review 76, 516-523. Reprinted in: The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 516 – 523.

     

    1986-1985

    • Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 1985. Monopolistic recycling of oil revenue and intertemporal bias in oil depletion and trade. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 100, 597 – 624.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Joseph Templeman, 1985. On the use of trade policy measures by a small country to counter foreign monopoly power. Oxford Economic Papers, 37, 346 – 52. .
    • James H. Cassing and Arye L. Hillman, 1985. Political-influence motives and the choice between tariffs and quotas. Journal of International Economics 19, 279-290.

     

    1983-1984

    • Franklin M. Fisher and Arye L. Hillman, 1984. The commodity composition of trade and the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem in the presence of aggregate and commodity specific factor-intensity reversals. Journal of International Economics 17, 159-172. Reprinted in: Franklin M. Fisher (Ed.) Aggregation: Aggregate Production Functions and Related Topics, chapter 11, pp. 261 – 275, Harvester, Wheatsheaf and MIT Press, 1992.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Eliakim Katz, 1984. Excise taxes, import restrictions, and the allocation of time to illegal activity. International Review of Law and Economics 1984, 4, 213 – 22.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Eliakim Katz, 1984. Oil price instability and domestic energy substitution for imported oil. Economic Record, 1984, 60, 28-33.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Eliakim Katz, 1984. Risk-averse rent seekers and the social cost of monopoly power. Economic Journal 94, 104-110. Reprinted in: The Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Charles Rowley, Robert Tollison and Gordon Tullock (Eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1988, pp. 81-90; The Economic Analysis of Rent Seeking, Roger Congleton and Robert Tollison (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Oxford, 1995, pp. 243 – 249; The Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Charles K, Rowley, Robert D. Tollison, and Gordon Tullock, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston and Dordrecht, pp. 81-90; Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1 – The Theory of Rent seeking. Roger D. Congleton, Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer 2008, pp. 97 – 103.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 1983. Pricing and depletion of an exhaustible resource when there is anticipation of trade disruption. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 98, 215 – 33.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Peter Swan, 1983. Participation rules for Pareto-optimal clubs. Journal of Public Economics [78]20, 55 – 76.

     

    1981-1982

    • Arye L. Hillman, 1982. Declining industries and political-support protectionist motives. American Economic Review 72, 1180-1187. Reprinted in: The WTO, Safeguards, and Temporary Protection from Imports, Chad Brown (Ed.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2006; The WTO and the Political Economy of Trade Policy, Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2008, pp. 43 – 50; Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2 – Applications Rent Seeking in Practice. Roger D. Congleton. Arye L. Hillman, Kai Konrad (Eds.), Springer, Berlin, 2008, pp. 105 – 112.
    • Mario I. Blejer and Arye L. Hillman, 1982. A proposition on short-run departures from the law of one price: Unanticipated inflation, relative price dispersion and commodity arbitrage. European Economic Review 17, 51-60. Reprinted (in Spanish): “Una explicacion de las desviaciones a corto plazo de la ley del precio unico: inflacion imprevista, dispersion de precios relativos y arbitraje commercial”. In Inflacion y varialibidad de los precios relativos, Mexico, DF, 1984, pp. 75 – 86.
    • Mario I. Blejer and Arye L. Hillman, 1982. On the dynamic non-equivalence of tariffs and quotas in the monetary model of the balance of payments. Journal of International Economics, August 1982, 13, 163 – 169. Reply, May 1985, 18, 381-382.
    • James H. Cassing and Arye L. Hillman, 1982. State-federal resource tax rivalry. Economic Record 58, 235 – 241.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 1982. Substitutes for a depletable resource and the monopolistic conservationist presumption. Australian Economic Papers 21, 193-199.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1981. Unilateral and bilateral trade policies for a minimum-wage economy. Journal of International Economics 11, 407 – 413.

     

    1979-1980

    • Arye L. Hillman, 1980. Observations on the relation between "revealed comparative advantage" and comparative advantage as indicated by pre-trade relative prices. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 116, 315 – 21.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1980. Notions of merit want. Public Finance/ Finances publiques 35, 213 – 226.
    • Gideon Fishelson, Arye L. Hillman, and Se'ev Hirsch, 1980. Comparative performance of Israel's industrial exports in the EEC and U.S. markets. In The Economic Integration of Israel in the EEC, edited by Herbert Giersch, J.C.B. Mohr, Paul Siebeck: Tübingen, pp. 125 – 174.
    • Arye L. Hillman, Edward Tower, and Gideon Fishelson, 1980. On water-in-the-quota. Canadian Journal of Economics 13, 310 – 317.
    • Gideon Fishelson, Arye L. Hillman, and Se'ev Hirsch, 1980. The factor-content characteristics of Israel's trade in a multilateral setting. In: The Economic Integration of Israel in the EEC, edited by Herbert Giersch, J.C.B. Mohr, Paul Siebeck: Tübingen, pp. 175 – 198.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Se'ev Hirsch, 1979. Factor-intensity reversals: Conceptual experiments with traded goods aggregates. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 115, 272-283.
    • Gideon Fishelson and Arye L. Hillman, 1979. Domestic monopoly and redundant tariff protection. Journal of International Economics 9, 47-55.
    • Ruth W. Arad and Arye L. Hillman, 1979. Embargo threat, learning and departure from comparative advantage. Journal of International Economics 9, 265 – 75.
    • Arad, Ruth W. and Arye L. Hillman, 1979. The collective good motive for immigration policy. Australian Economic Papers, 18(4), 243-257.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Peter Swan, 1979. Club participation under uncertainty. Economics Letters 4, 307–12.

     

    1977-1978

    • Arye L. Hillman and Clark W. Bullard III, 1978. Energy, the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem and U.S. international trade. American Economic Review 68, 96-106. Reprinted in: Bertie Ohlin: Critical Assessments, John Cunningham Wood (Ed.), Routledge, London, 1997.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1978. Symmetries and asymmetries between public input and public good equilibria. Public Finance/ Finances publiques, No. 3, 33, 269 – 279.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 1977. The Brigden Theorem. Economic Record, 53, 434-446.
    • https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4932.1977.tb0030…
    • Elhanan Helpman, and Arye L. Hillman, 1977. Two remarks on optimal club size. Economica, 44, 293 – 96.
    • Gideon Fishelson and Arye L. Hillman, 1977. Inflationary government financing and the trade deficit: Evidence from Israel. In: Nadav Halevi and Ya'acov Kopf (Eds.), Studies in Economics 1977, Israel Economic Association, Jerusalem, August 1978, p. 94 – 107 (Hebrew).

     

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Lecture on occasion of honorary doctorate University of Genova, Political economy’, March 5, 2016. Available at:

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Comments and short papers

    • A note on the distribution of tariff proceeds, Economic Record 1970, 46, 117-19. David E. James co-author.
    • A generalized cost allocation scheme: Comment. In: Steven A. Y. Lim (Ed.), Theory and Measurement of Economic Externalities, Academic Press, New York, 1976, pp. 103 – 106.
    • The case for terminal protection for declining industries: Comment, Southern Economic Journal, July 1977, 43, 155-160.
    • The theory of clubs: A technological formulation. In Agnar Sandmo (Ed.), Essays in Public Economics, D.C. Heath and Co., Lexington, Mass., 1978, 29 – 47.
    • Preemptive rent seeking and the social cost of monopoly power, International Journal of Industrial Organization, September 1984, 2, 277 – 281.
    • Producer and consumer interests, the state-owned pipeline, and public authority pricing of natural gas, Economic Record 1984, 60, 85-89.
    • Characterizing equilibrium rent-seeking behavior: A reply to Tullock. Public Choice 1987, 54, 85-87. Dov Samet co-author.
    • Comment on: The political economy of protectionism: Tariffs and retaliation in the timber industry. In: Robert E. Baldwin (Ed.), Trade Policy Issues and Empirical Analysis, University of Chicago Press for NBER, 1988, pp. 364 – 368.
    • Comment on: Technology policy in the completed European market. In: L. Alan Winters and Anthony Venables (Eds.), European Integration: Trade and Industry, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 1991, pp. 161 – 164.
    • The economics and politics of Europe 1992. In Europe 1992: The Perspective from Israel, In Arye L. Hillman and Zvi Sussman (Eds.), Israel International Institute for Applied Economic Policy Review, Tel-Aviv, 1991, pp. 7 – 22.
    • Comment on: Capital controls in direct democracies. In: Hans-Jürgen Vosgerau (Ed.), European Integration in the World Economy, Springer, Heidelberg, 1992, pp. 772 – 774.
    • Comment on: Money and credit in the transition of the Czechoslovak Republic. In: Horst Siebert (Ed.), The Transformation of Socialist Economies, J.C.B. Mohr Paul Siebeck, Tübingen, 1992, pp. 326 – 330.
    • Debate on the transition of post-communist economies to a market economy, Acta Oeconomica (Journal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) 1992, 44, 285 – 289.
    • Domestic politics, foreign interests, and international trade policy. Reply. American Economic Review, 84, 1476-78. Arye L. Hillman and Heinrich W. Ursprung, 1994.
    • Comment on: The philosophy of locational competition. In: Horst Siebert (Ed.), Locational Competition in the World Economy, J.C.B. Mohr Paul Siebeck, Tübingen, 1995, pp. 17 – 25.
    • The legal system in the transition from social to private property: with reference to Hobbesian anarchy, Locke's natural right of freedom, and the rule of law. In Proceedings of Conference on Challenges and Opportunities for Economic Transition in Yugoslavia, Goran Pitić (Ed.) USAID, Economic Institute, Chesapeake Associates, 1998, pp. 64-89.
    • Hobbes and Samuel: Reply (to Geoffrey Brennan). Public Choice 2009, 141, 13 –15.

     

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    LITERATURE SURVEYS

    • Wilfred Ethier and Arye L. Hillman, 2019. The politics of international trade policy. In: Roger D. Congleton, Bernard N. Grofman, and Stefan Voigt (Eds.), volume 2, chapter 32. Oxford Handbook of Public Choice, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, pp. 653-683.
    • Arye L. Hillman and Ngo Van Long, 2019. Rent seeking: the social cost of contestable benefits. In: Roger D. Congleton, Bernard N. Grofman, and Stefan Voigt (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Public Choice, volume 1, chapter 25, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, pp. 489-518.
    • https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/161901/1/cesifo1_wp6462.pdf
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2013. Rent seeking. In Michael Reksulak, Laura Razzolini, William F. Shughart, II (Eds.), The Elgar Companion to Public Choice (2nd Edition). Edward Elgar, Cheltenham U.K., pp. 307-330.
    • Roger D. Congleton, Arye L, Hillman, and Kai Konrad, 2008. Forty years of research on rent seeking: An overview. In: 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking. Springer, Heidelberg. Volume 1: Theory of Rent Seeking, Volume 2: Applications: Rent Seeking in Practice, pp. 1-44.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2008. The gains from trade and refusal to trade. In: Ngo Van Long, Makoto Tawada, and Binh Tran Nam (Eds.), Globalization and Emerging Issues in Trade Theory and Policy. A volume in honor of the 80th birthday of Murray Kemp, Emerald Group Publishing, pp. 193 – 208.
    • https://faculty.biu.ac.il/~hillman/books/2008_Hillman_Gains_from_trade_…
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2003. Trade liberalization and globalization. In: Charles Rowley and Friedrich Schneider (Eds.), 2003. Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 312 – 20. Reprinted in: Charles K. Rowley and Friedrich Schneider (Eds.), Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy. Springer, New York, 2008.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2003. International trade policy: Explaining departure from free trade. In: Charles Rowley and Friedrich Schneider (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 129 – 138. Reprinted in: Charles K. Rowley and Friedrich Schneider (Eds.), Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy. Springer, New York, 2008.
    • Arye L. Hillman, 2001 (Italian). La politica del commercio internazionale per gli anni 2000: idee fondamentali e sviluppi. Il Futuro delle Relazione Economiche Internazionale, Saggi in onere di Fredrico Caffè, a cure di Giancarlo Corsetti, Guido M. Rey, and Gian Cesare Romagnoli, Franco Angeli, Milano 2001, pp. 27 – 63. (Translated by Maria Grazia Nicolosi).
    • Arye L. Hillman 1989. Policy motives and international trade restrictions. In Hans-Jürgen Vosgerau (Ed.), New Institutional Arrangements for the World Economy, Springer, Heidelberg, 1989, pp. 284 – 302.
    • Fred Gruen and Arye L. Hillman, 1981. A review of issues pertinent to liquid fuel policy. Economic Record 1981, 57, 11-27.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Book reviews and review articles

    • Review of Stephen P. Magee, William A. Brock and Leslie Young, ‘Black Hole Tariffs and Endogenous Policy Theory: Political Economy in General Equilibrium’, Journal of Economic Literature, 1991, 29(1), 104-106.
    • Review of Gordon Tullock, ‘The Economics of Special Privilege and Rent Seeking’, Kyklos, 1991, 44(4), 657-659.
    • The World Bank and the persistence of poverty in poor countries. European Journal of Political Economy 2002, 18, 783 – 95. Extended review of: William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth, MIT Press, 2001.
    • Corruption and public finance: an IMF perspective. European Journal of Political Economy 2004, 20, 1067 – 77. Extended review of: Governance, Corruption, and Economic Performance. George T. Abed and Sanjeev Gupta, (Eds.), International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, 2002.
    • Review of Jonathan Bendor, Daniel Diermeier, David A. Siegel, and Michael M. Ting: ‘A behavioral theory of elections’, Public Choice 2012, 150, 391-394.
    • Review of Peter Bernholz, ‘Totalitarianism, Terrorism and Supreme Values: History and Theory,’ Public Choice 2018, 176(3), 567-571.
    • Review of Stefan Voigt, ‘Constitutional Economics’, Public Choice, 2021

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Policy documents

    • A program for restructuring of the Histadrut sector of the economy of Israel, August 1989. With Yitzhak Goldberg et al Hebrew and English.
    • Macroeconomic policy in Hungary and its microeconomic implications. In European Economy, Economic Transformation in Hungary and Poland, Economic Commission of the European Communities, Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, March 1990, 43, 55 – 66.
    • The economy of Israel: Misinformation or disinformation? Prepared for the Office of the Economic Advisor, Prime Minister's Office, Israel, January 1992.
    • Social marginalization: The effects of trade and technology. Research Department, World Trade Organization, Geneva, February 1997.
    • Israel and Jordan in a new Middle East. In Proceedings of Symposium on Israel-Middle East Relations in the Year 2000, American-Israel Economic Corporation, New York, 1996, pp. 122 – 124.
    • The past as a guide to the future. In: The Progress of Israel's Economy: The 50th Anniversary of the State of Israel, edited by Mordecai Hacohen, American-Israel Economic Corporation, New York, 1998.

     

     

    Last Updated Date : 12/05/2022