“In 1999, I happened to look at data on Israel through a professional lens for the first time,” relates Professor Dan Ben-David, a Tel-Aviv University economist. “What I saw changed my life. While Israel has state-of-the art universities, a cutting edge hi-tech sector and medical professionals at the top of their field internationally, the average amount produced by Israelis per hour (often referred to as labor productivity) is not only among the lowest in the developed world – it has been steadily falling further and further behind the leading developed world countries for over four decades.” Read More
“If Israel does not implement some fundamental policy changes while it is still able to do so, this will not end well…” asserts Ben-David, a macroeconomist specializing in economic growth and international trade who served as advisor to the World Bank and the World Trade Organization in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. “Israel is situated on a socioeconomic trajectory that is simply unsustainable in the long run.”
Following this discovery, Ben-David increasingly shifted the focus of his research from academic topics to Israel’s fundamental socioeconomic challenges. As he delved more deeply into the underlying determinants of Israel’s relatively low economic growth, high income gaps and poverty rates, he began collaborating on the policy research with some of Israel’s top academic researchers and sharing the findings with Israel’s leading policy makers (including every Israeli prime minister since 2000) and policy-shapers.
These collaborations evolved over the years, taking on different forms. In 2015, Professor Dan Ben-David and Professor Ayal Kimhi, a Hebrew University economist, established the Shoresh Institution to fill a vacuum – the need for an independent Israeli policy research institution whose sole raison d’être is its focus on the root (shoresh) domestic challenges that pose existential threats to the country in the long-run.
Shoresh’s goal is to provide Israel’s policy-makers and all those who care about Israel with reliable academic-level findings and evidence-based analyses in clear and accessible language. These are fundamental building blocks essential for enabling strategic perspectives and comprehensive systemic solutions.
The apolitical nature of the Shoresh Institution – which differs from the more common research center model of advocacy – makes it a unique and important source of impartial information. The experienced Shoresh team is a highly respected and trusted leader in its field, whose findings are cited by Israel’s top policy-makers spanning the political spectrum. Collapse
