Location: Neve Ilan Hotel
All Expenses Paid
What is economic freedom? Why is it important and how does it produce growth and prosperity? Listen, learn, and discuss with some of the best economists and leading policymakers from around the world.
This Seminar Has Ended.
Video Recordings from the Seminar are available here
Sunday, February 26
Monday, February 27
Tuesday, February 28
Wednesday, March 1
Thursday, March 2
Donald J. Boudreaux
Donald J. Boudreaux is a Senior Fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a Mercatus Center Board Member, and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University. He holds the Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center. He specializes in globalization and trade, law and economics, and antitrust economics.
Boudreaux is committed to making economics more accessible to a wider audience, and he has lectured across the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe on a wide variety of topics, including antitrust law and international trade. He is the author of the books Hypocrites and Half-Wits: A Daily Dose of Sanity from Cafe Hayek and Globalization. His articles appear in such publications as the Wall Street Journal and US News & World Report as well as numerous scholarly journals. He writes a blog (with Russell Roberts) called Cafe Hayek and a regular column on economics for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He has appeared numerous times on John Stossel’s Fox show to discuss a range of economic issues.
Previously, he was president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an associate professor of legal studies and economics at Clemson University. He also serves as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.
Boudreaux earned a PhD in economics from Auburn University and a law degree from the University of Virginia.
Yehonatan Givati
Yehonatan Givati is an associate professor at Hebrew University Law School. He is also affiliated with the Center for Empirical Studies of Decision Making and the Law.
His scholarly interest lies in the area of economic analysis of law. His work is both theoretical and empirical. He applies the tools of law and economics to three areas of law: tax law, law enforcement, and administrative law.
He received a PhD from the Economics Department at Harvard University in 2013, and an SJD from Harvard Law School in 2011.
Givati served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School and at Columbia Law School. Before starting to teach he was a Post Graduate Research Fellow in Law and Economics at New York University School of Law.
Michael Sarel
Emily Skarbek
I’m an Associate Research Professor of Political Economy in the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and the Director of the PPE Research Workshop at Brown University. Before joining Brown in 2017, I was a tenured lecturer in the newly-formed interdisciplinary Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. It was here that I worked with colleagues to develop new undergraduate degree programs in both political economy and philosophy, politics, and economics. I also served as program director of the masters in political economy.
My two streams of research sit within the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics framework. The first examines how civil associations function to produce governance institutions under challenging circumstances such as natural disasters or the absence of state capacity. My second stream of work examines the history of economic thought with an focus on the relationship between economics and institutions. My work in this area has benefited from my time as a Fellow at the Center for History of Political Economy at Duke University in 2011-2012.
Steven Koonin
Steven E. Koonin is a university professor at New York University with appointments in the Stern School of Business, the Tandon School of Engineering, and the Department of Physics. His current research focuses on climate science and energy technologies. Through a series of articles and lectures that began in 2014, Koonin has advocated for a more accurate, complete, and transparent public representation of climate and energy matters. His bestselling book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters was published in 2021.
Koonin served as under secretary for science in the US Department of Energy from 2009 to 2011, where he led the inaugural Quadrennial Technology Review. Before joining the government, he spent five years as chief scientist for BP. For almost thirty years, Koonin was a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where served for nine years as vice president and provost, facilitating the research of more than 300 scientists and engineers and catalyzing multiple research initiatives.
In addition to the National Academy of Sciences, Koonin’s memberships include the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Jason group of scientists who solve technical problems for the US government. He has been a trustee of the Institute for Defense Analyses since 2014 and is currently an independent governor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; he has served in similar roles for the Los Alamos, Sandia, Brookhaven, and Argonne National Laboratories.
Koonin has a BS in physics from Caltech and a PhD in theoretical physics from MIT. He is the author of the classic 1985 textbook Computational Physics and has published some 200 peer-reviewed papers in the fields of physics and astrophysics, scientific computation, energy technology and policy, and climate science.
Eliezer Brender
Elie is CEO at Exigent and brings over 25 years of investment experience to the firm. As CEO, he is responsible for leading the firm’s investment activities across asset classes and geographies, as well as managing strategic relationships with Exigent’s partners and investors.
Starting in 2009, Elie managed credit arbitrage and global-macro strategies for the firm, including TALF 1.0, as well as making investments in financial companies including an early-stage investment in Cross River Bank. In 2015, Elie pivoted the firm to make concentrated investments in the technology sector. In 2021, he led the firm’s seed investment in HighPost Capital, a PE firm founded by the Bezos and Moross families. Elie began his career in 1995 when he earned his Series 7 and 63 securities licenses at the age of 18. In 1999, Elie joined JPMorgan, where he worked in primary areas of finance, including the capital markets division. He later worked in the real estate division of a family-office based in New York.
Elie, who was born and raised in New York, serves on the Board of Governors, Executive Committee and Investment Committee at Shalem College in Jerusalem, an elite college that prepares the next generation of Israel’s political, economic, cultural, and intellectual leaders. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Friedberg Economic Institute, an institution with a mission to promote the principles of free-markets and economic freedom in Israel. Elie and his wife are active supporters of Merkaz Panim, an organization that provides mental and physical support to families facing fertility challenges. Elie is an auto-didact in history, philosophy, and economics.
Bini Zomer
Binyamin Zomer acts as General Manager of Corporate Affairs and Joint Ventures at Chevron Mediterranean Limited. Before that he has served as Noble Energy’s Director of Corporate Affairs in Israel since January 2010. In that capacity, Bini was responsible for Noble’s government relations, media relations and corporate social responsibility projects.
Prior to joining Noble, Bini served as Deputy Director for Policy and Government Affairs at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) where he focused on energy and homeland security issues. Before joining AIPAC, Bini was Director of Federal Government Relations at Accenture LLP and before that served as Counsel to Don Nickles, US Senator from Oklahoma, after practicing law in Chicago. Bini has a Law degree from the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and a B.A. in Government from the University of Texas.Bini and his wife, Heather, made Aliyah in 2010 and reside in Modi’in with their four daughters.
Oded Gur-Lavie
Oded is the CEO of NT-TAO. NT-TAO’s mission is to develop a unique nuclear fusion technology that will enable the world to transition towards a cleaner, decarbonized, sustainable and more democratized future. He is also a Research Fellow in the Haifa Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy (HMS). He is also a publishing Expert at The MirYam Institute.
Previously the Chairman of the Dolphin Association of veteran submariners. He concluded his military career in 2015 as the Head of the IDF’s Legal & Strategic Policy Team as part of the planning directorate. He is the former Head of the Sea Division in charge of Naval Operations,
Training and Doctrine for the Israeli Navy and former Commander of the Israeli Submarine Force.
He graduated Com-Laude in Electrical Engineering from the Israeli Institute of Technology – Technion, Haifa.
Received his Master’s in Public Administration (MC-MPA) from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, participated in the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program. Recently finished a year as a Visiting Fellow at MIT Sloan school of Management.
The schedule has not been released yet. Please review previous years schedules as a sample.