Academic

So Long, Israel (Part I)

By Kim Krawiec

I just returned today from my extended visit to Israel, where I spent the month of December sightseeing, conferencing, teaching, presenting papers (here and here), and meeting new friends.  I was lucky during this trip to have a chance to meet faculty from Tel Aviv, Hebrew, and Bar-Ilan, but spent most of the time at Haifa, and am happy to say that I got to know almost the entire faculty there at least a little bit.

Aside from the beautiful location in the Carmel forest overlooking the Mediterranean, Haifa is a great place to be because the faculty is astonishingly smart, welcoming, and engaged.  I feel certain that I?ve made life-long friends there.

I can?t do justice to all the people I met and the fun things that I did and saw there, but wanted to review a few of the highlights in my goodbye post.  Avishalom Tor, whom I?ve known since he was an S.J.D. student at Harvard (yikes, I?m old!)  was kind enough to set up this visit, organized a fabulous conference at the beginning of the trip, and basically looked after me the whole time I was there. 

Avishalom?s research uses a behavioral and experimental approach to study competitive behavior generally and its legal regulation in market settings specifically.  His work has been published in legal, decision-making, psychological, and economic journals, such as the Michigan Law Review, Antitrust Law Journal, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. You can read the coverage of his research on The N-Effect: More Competitors, Less Competition (with Stephen M. Garcia, University of Michigan - Ross School of Business) in the Boston Globe and the Economist (subscription required).  Avishalom is also the Secretary of the European Association of Law and Economics (EALE).  

One of Avishalom?s many collaborators is fellow Haifa faculty member Oren Gazal-Ayal.  I spent several lunches (and a wonderful dinner on my last night in Haifa) talking to Oren about his various projects, all of which are fascinating.  They range from testifying before the Israeli legislature on sentencing guidelines, comparing the incentives of Israeli academics to their U.S. counterparts, analyzing the impact of defendant characteristics on criminal sentences, and researching the influence of innocence on plea bargaining, among others.  See Oren?s faculty publication page or his SSRN page to download these and other articles.

One of the highlights of the trip involved fellow Haifa visitor NYU?s Rochelle Dreyfuss and her spouse, Robert, with whom we spent a great, but rainy, day sightseeing in the ancient port city of Caesarea.  The top photo above shows Caesarea on a beautiful sunny day.  We took the lower one with our iphone during a break in the rain. 

The trip to Caesarea was followed by dinner at the home of Haifa?s amazing new dean, Niva Elkin-Koren.  U.S. readers in IP probably already know Elkin-Koren?s work, which is extensive.  Elkin-Koren is also a Global Visiting Professor of Law at NYU. It must be hard for someone so academically inclined to take on administrative duties, but Haifa faculty seem to take great pride in their institution and the collaborative way in which it is managed.  Everyone seems to pitch in, in terms of committee and other service, and Niva strikes me as a good example of that.

I?m jet-lagged and need a nap, so I?ll quit there for now.  Tomorrow, I?ll conclude this ?farewell to Israel? post.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on December 31, 2009 (boomark / email).