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.

Michal Halperin has been serving as Director General of the Israel Competition (Antitrust) Authority since March 2016.
Prior to her appointment, Halperin was a partner at Meitar Liquornik Geva Leshem Tal Law Offices, where she was head of the antitrust department.

Eli Groner is a Managing Director at the Israeli office of Koch Disruptive Technologies, the technology investment arm of Koch Industries.

Mr. Groner was previously the Prime Minister’s Director-General, a position he held between June 2015 through September 2018.

Prior to assuming this role, Mr. Groner was the economic attaché to Washington. Mr. Groner’s time in the public sector was preceded by two years as a senior advisor to the Chairman of Tnuva, Israel’s largest consumer packaged goods company, six years as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and five years as a journalist at The Jerusalem Post.

Alona Bar-On is the publisher, chairperson, and co-owner of Globes, the Israeli daily business newspaper, since 2017.

Prior to her position at Globes, Alona founded and managed ‘Bait VeGag’, an investment fund for urban rejuvenation, established in 2011. Since 2013, Alona has also been a Director at ‘Melisron’, a commercial real estate company, and has also been a Director at Globes newspaper, since 1998.

Between 2010 and 2013 Alona was in charge of the newspaper’s online desk, carrying out vast reorganization and reform. Between 2001 and 2010, Alona was a financial consultant at Yitzhak Swary Ltd., consulting for large firms during their mergers and acquisitions processes.

Alona has an MBA Degree from INSEAD and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Accountancy from Tel-Aviv University.

During her military service, Alona served as a reporter for ‘BaMahane’, the IDF’s weekly published magazine.

Omer Moav is a Professor of Economics at IDC and at the University of Warwick, and formerly at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also served as the head of the advisory board to the Israeli minister of finance in 2009.

He received his PhD in economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and spent a year at MIT as a post-doc fellow. Moav was awarded in 2012 the Landau prize from the Israeli mifal hapais for his achievements in research in macroeconomics, he was awarded the Rector’s prize from the Hebrew University in 2006 for his research and teaching. Moav’s research focuses on economic growth and development and is published in the leading journals of economics. He often comments in the Israeli and international media on the Israeli economy.

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.

Lynne Kiesling is a Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy and also serves as Co-Director of the Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics (IRLE), and Faculty Affiliate in the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation.

Formerly, she was an Associate Professor in Economics at Purdue University and the Associate Director of the Purdue University Research Center in Economics.

Her research focuses on the effect of regulatory institutions and their incentives on innovation and technological change, particularly in the electric power industry.

She teaches classes in microeconomics, technological change, environmental economics, antitrust and regulation, environmental economics, and history of economic thought, and all of these topics and themes inform her research and other writing.

Ori Katz is a researcher at the Kohelet Forum and a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University Economics Department. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Berglas School of Economics at Tel-Aviv University, where he also received his MA in economics and his BSc in industrial engineering.

Ori’s fields of interest include Economic Growth, Economic History, Comparative Development and Economic Mobility. His current research analyzes US data from the 19th and early 20th century to study how technology, institutions, and cultural norms contributed to important phenomena, such as long-term growth, inter-generational mobility, the Demographic Transition and the Great Divergence. ​He is also working on two books, which will be published in the next year.

Ori has several years of experience in research projects for consulting firms and in the financial sector. He also worked as a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute of Market Studies. He publishes a popular personal blog on economics, named “Minority Opinion” published regularly in Haaretz.

Yaara Kalmanovich is owner and Chocolatier at “Cocoa Forest”. Before entering the chocolate business, Yaara worked as a lawyer and manager of a non-profit which assisted at-risk children. Yaara has a Masters in Law from Hebrew University.

Guy Mor is the Director of Regulatory Policy at the Israeli Agriculture Ministry. Before that he was associate at Tadmor & Co. Yuval Levy & Co. Guy has a Masters in Law from Tel Aviv University. He publishes the blog “The Regulator”.

Lior Tabori is the Founder and CEO of Myfees, a startup in the FinTech Industry. Formerly he served in various positions in the Israeli Finance Ministry. Lior publishes the blog “Treasury Boy”, broadcasts a podcast at “Added Value” and is involved in various social projects. He has a Masters in Economics from Ben Gurion University.