I am an Associate Professor of Economics at Tel Aviv University. My research focuses on the impact of conflict on individual-level outcomes – including employment, education, fertility, and health – and the economic and political determinants of violence and conflict in developing countries. My research has been published in leading academic journals including The Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of economic Behavior & Organization, Labor Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Review of economics of the Household, Defense and Peace Economics, International Labour Review, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Development studies, Acta Politica, Climate Change Economics and Oxford University Press. I have worked as a consultant on issues related to conflict, trade, and development for the World Bank, IMF, USAID, and DFID. I received my M.A. in Economics in 2003 and my PhD in Economics in 2008, both from the Hebrew University.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5022-1130
Associate Professor and researcher in the department of Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Political economy, Labour economics, Economics of conflict, Economic costs of conflict, Economics of education, Econometrics, Applied microeconomics, Development economics, Individual-Level outcomes of conflict, Household welfare under conflict, Economic/Political determinants of violence, Discrimination Economic inequality, and Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Exports, Employment and Conflict: Evidence From the Second Intifada
Do export shocks affect conflict? The evidence on this question has so far focused mainly on commodity price shocks. This paper uses data from the entire export basket to examine whether shocks to Palestinian exports in the second half of the 1990s affected the intensity of the subsequent Palestinian uprising (‘Second Intifada’). The analysis uses sector-specific changes in Chinese and global exports to instrument Palestinian exports to minimize potential endogeneity bias of export changes with respect to conflict. The findings suggest that an increase of USD 10 million in Palestinian exports of a sector employing 10% of the locality’s private employment reduces the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in that locality by 13.9 percent. The paper provides evidence that these results are consistent with the opportunity cost mechanism of conflict participation.
Obstacles to labour market participation among Arab Palestinian women in Israel
Many students face various obstacles when going to school, including poor physical infrastructure and exposure to conflict. This paper investigates the costs of conflict-induced substandard infrastructure in terms of educational performance. We focus on students in the West Bank over 2000-2006 during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict is characterized by a system of mobility restrictions enforced through physical barriers such as checkpoints, which increase commuting costs and the likelihood of encounters with security forces. We find that the introduction of checkpoints near a school reduces the probability of passing the final high school exam by 1 percentage point and the overall score by 0.04 standard deviations. Direct encounters with checkpoints have strong negative effects on performance, suggesting that time loss due to delays or the psychological impact of encountering security personnel may be important mechanisms.
Obstacles on the Road to School: The Impacts of Mobility Restrictions on Educational Performance
Despite recent increases in educational attainment among Arab Palestinian women in Israel, their labour force participation rates continue to be below those of Jewish women. This study draws on data from the Israeli Labour Force Survey and Social Survey covering the period 1995–2016 to investigate whether this pattern can be explained by socio-economic and demographic factors, level of religiosity, human capital assets, family structure and related public policies, and early retirement. All these factors are found to affect the probability of Arab Palestinian women participating in the labour market, raising implications for labour market policies.
