Cato Institute Distinguished senior fellow José Piñera is co-chairman of Cato’s Project on Social Security Choice and Founder and President of the International Center for Pension Reform. Formerly Chile’s Secretary of Labor and Social Security, he was the architect of the country’s successful reform of its pension system.

As Secretary of Labor, Piñera also designed the labor laws and introduced flexibility to the Chilean labor market and, as Secretary of Mining, he was responsible for the constitutional law that established private property rights in Chilean mines.

Dr. Piñera now advises governments throughout the world on the establishment of personal account retirement systems. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Wired, and several other publications. Pinera received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

How Market Reforms Transformed Chile

Ori Yogev has served as director of the Israel Government Companies Authority since July 2013. Prior to this position, Yogev served as chairman of a large number of companies in the public and private sectors, and served as chairman of the whitewater group, which he also founded (2006-2013) Israel (2010-2013), Chairman of Wavion Wireless Networks (2010-2011) and Chairman of the Advisory Committee for the National Economic Council (2009-2010). During these years, Yogev served concurrently as economic advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the years preceding these positions Yogev served as Chairman of DBQ Data Enhancement (2005-2009), Business Manager and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot (2004-2008), Chairman of Plastro Irrigation (2007), and Chairman of Karnit – Compensation Fund for Road Accident Victims (2002-2004).

Between the years 2002-2004, Yogev served as Head of Budget Division at the Ministry of Finance. During his term in office, and in light of the economic crisis in Israel during the same period, comprehensive reforms were implemented in government spending, including the transition from a budgetary pension to a Pay-as-you-go pension, cutting child allowances, raising the retirement age, merging authorities and religious councils, and reducing the number of employees in the public sector.

Yogev was appointed as head of the budget department after serving as a member of the Investment Committee of the Mizrahi Pension Fund (1999-2002), Chairman of the Young Directors Forum at the Israel Management Center (1998-2002), Chairman of Walla (1993-1999), President and CEO of Omni Food Brands Ltd. (1994-1997), and member of the Management and Director of the Jerusalem District in Jerusalem The “Magen” insurance (1990-1993) Yogev began his career in the Ministry of Finance as a government subsidy and import consultant and as a senior advisor to the Director General of the Ministry of Finance (1987-1990).

Ori Yogev holds a BA in Economics from Tel Aviv University and an MA in Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

הרפורמה בחברות הממשלתיות

Professor Dan Ben-David is the president and founder of the Shoresh Institution and a senior faculty member of the Department of Public Policy at Tel-Aviv University. He is the former executive director of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies.

Professor Ben-David received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and specializes in macroeconomics, economic growth, and international trade.  He served as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London and as a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Dan Ben-David also served as an advisor to the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.

In recognition of his public impact, Professor Ben-David was named “Person of the Year” by the Calcalist newspaper in 2010.  He was included among the 100 most influential people in Israel by the Haaretz-TheMarker newspaper in 2010 and in 2012 while the Ha’ir newspaper ranked him among the 50 most influential people in Israeli education in 2007.  Academically, Professor Dan Ben-David was ranked among the 1,000 most cited academic economists in the world and among the ten most cited economists in Israel during the years 1990-2000.  He received Tel-Aviv University’s “Best Teacher Award” in Social Sciences in 2004 and was included in its list of best teachers in 2012.

Israel’s Productivity Problem | A Discussion with Dan Ben-David and Michael Sarel

Dr. Sarel is head of the Kohelet Forum for Economics.  He served until March 2014 as the Chief Economist and director of state revenue, research and international affairs at Israel’s Ministry of Finance.  He obtained his doctoral degree from Harvard where he was also a teaching fellow. Sarel worked in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, The Bank of Israel, in the Ministry of Finance as head of the research department and in Harel Insurance and Finance Group as the head of the economics and research department.

Alan Feld is the Founder and Managing Partner of Vintage Investment Partners. Vintage is a Leading integrated venture platform, managing over $1.3 billion through fund-of-funds, secondary and direct co-invest programs in Israel, the US and Europe.

Prior to founding Vintage in 2002, Alan Feld was a general partner at Israel Seed Partners and at Vertex Ventures. Prior to Vertex, Alan was the Managing Director of Evergreen Capital Markets/Robertson Stephens Israel. Before moving to Israel in 1994, Alan was at Goodman’s (Toronto), one of Canada’s leading corporate law firms.

Alan was Founding Chairman of StartUp Jerusalem, a non-profit organization run by Israeli and Palestinian business people helping to foster job growth in Jerusalem. Alan currently serves as Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Be’eri project, an initiative of the Hartman Institute, and is also a former board member of the Israel Democracy Institute and the Jewish Funders Network (US). Alan also served as Associate Chairman of the Canadian Jewish Congress, President of the North American Jewish Students Network and a board member of the Canada Israel Committee and Kolot (Jerusalem), a pluralistic adult Jewish education program.
Alan received an MBA from York University in Toronto, an L.L.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and a B.A. in Commerce and Finance from the University of Toronto.

Emily Skarbek is Assistant Research Professor in the Political Theory Project at Brown University. She earned her PhD in economics from George Mason University in 2009. Her research examines civil society, governance, and history of economic thought. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Public Choice, Journal of Institutional Economics, and American Journal of Economics and Sociology. In 2014, she was awarded the annual Gordon Tullock prize for best article published in Public Choice by a junior scholar. She is also a contributing author to several books including After Katrina: The Political Economy of Disaster and Community Rebound and Hayek and the Modern World. 

Minimum Wage: Solution or Problem?

Economic Institutions and Poverty

Michael Walker is a Senior Fellow and Honorary Director of The Fraser Institute and Chairman of the Fraser Institute Foundation. From its inception in 1974, until September 2005, Michael Walker directed the research activities of the Fraser Institute and was its Chief Executive Officer. Before that, he taught at Western University and Carleton University and was employed at the Bank of Canada and the Federal Department of Finance. He received his Ph.D. in Econometrics at the University of Western Ontario and has been awarded Honorary LLD and DSS degrees.

As an economist, he has authored or edited 45 books and written thousands of articles on popular and technical economic issues. His goal as a Founder of the Fraser Institute has been to discover policies that enhance human development. He has provided policy advice in this pursuit on 6 continents.

He is the co-founder, with Milton and Rose D. Friedman, of the Economic Freedom of the World project which is now a collaboration of institutes in 85 countries and produces the annual Economic Freedom of the World Index.

Economic Freedom of the World Index

Economic Freedom Around the World

Lawrence H. White is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center.

His latest books are The Clash of Economic Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and (as co-editor) Renewing the Search for a Monetary Constitution (Cato Institute, 2015).

Best known for his work on free banking, White is also author of The Theory of Monetary Institutions (1999), Free Banking in Britain (2nd ed., 1995), and Competition and Currency (1989). His research on monetary theory and banking history has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Monetary Economics, and other leading economics journals. His popular writings have appeared in The Wall St. Journal and elsewhere.

Problems of Market Failure and Government Failure

How Government Policies Drove the 2007 Financial Collapse