Avraham (Avi) Simhon (born 1959) is an Israeli economist who has been chair of the National Economic Council since December 2015. Prior to chairing the council he was an economic advisor to the Minister of Finance and head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at the Hebrew University.

Biography

Avi Simhon was born in Kadima. His paternal ancestors were

Moroccan Jews Moroccan Jews ( ar, اليهود المغاربة, al-Yahūd al-Maghāriba he, יהודים מרוקאים, Yehudim Maroka'im) are Jews who live in or are from Morocco. Moroccan Jews constitute an ancient community dating to Roman times. Jews b ...

who made

Aliyah Aliyah (, ; he, עֲלִיָּה ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from Jewish diaspora, the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the Israel, State of Israel ...

in 1840 and founded Neve Tzedek. His grandfather, Yehoshua Simhon, was a Russian-born Jew who was one of the founders of Kadima and the first chairman of the settlement. Simhon received his BA in economics and mathematics from the Hebrew University in 1984, a master's degree in economics in 1986 and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota in 1992. His doctoral advisors were Nobel Prize laureate in economics

Edward Prescott Edward Christian Prescott (December 26, 1940 – November 6, 2022) was an American economist. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2004, sharing the award with Finn E. Kydland, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics ...

and professor Neil Wallace. In addition, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University's Economics Department in 1994. He teaches economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1994. In 2010 he was appointed economic advisor to Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz instead of professor Omer Moav. Avi Simhon was a member of the Committee for Economic and Social Change (the Trachtenberg Committee) and of the Committee for the Examination of Poverty Indices in Israel (the Itzhaki Committee). Simhon is an expert on

macroeconomics Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...

and the Israeli economy. He also has an expertise in corruption in the fields of labour sciences. He was appointed chairman of the National Economic Council in December 2015. and served until 2021. he is married, has three children and lives in Jerusalem. In October 2012, Simhon announced his intention to run in the Likud primaries for the Knesset. He was placed in the 53rd place on the

Likud Yisrael Beiteinu Likud Yisrael Beiteinu ( he, הליכוד ישראל ביתנו; often referred by the Israeli media as Likud Beiteinu, ) was an electoral alliance formed in 2012 by the center-right Likud and the Right-wing politics, right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu t ...

Knesset list. He ran in the Likud primaries in 2022 and was placed in the 53rd place a second time.

Controversies

In the past, Simhon published an article in '' The Marker'', titled "A Family with 8 Children is a Sin", which draw a lot of criticism. In the article, Simhon asked: "We are not like Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and what is the iron ceiling that prevents Israel from joining the 10 or 15 most prosperous countries in the world? The reason lies in the fact that in Israel two large groups – ultraorthodox and arabs – Almost completely different from the rest of the economy."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Simhon, Avi Israeli economists Israeli Jews Israeli people of Moroccan-Jewish descent Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1959 births Living people