In memory of Yair Mundlak 1927 - 2015
Agricultural economics, growth and development, econometrics.
Ruth Hochberg Professor (Emeritus) of Agricultural of EconomicsProfessor Mundlak passed away October 2015
יאיר מונדלק ז"ל
יאיר הצטרף לסגל המחלקה לכלכלה חקלאית ברחובות בשנת 1957, וביחד עם מורים נוספים שהביא בעקבותיו, הצעיד את ההוראה והמחקר במחלקה לעידן חדש, המשלב מודלים תיאורטיים מתקדמים וכלים כמותיים מודרניים. יאיר העמיד דורות של תלמידים, שגם אם חרקו שיניים בכיתה שלו לנוכח דרישותיו הבלתי-מתפשרות, ידעו להעריך את המיומנויות המקצועיות שרכשו בזכותו. יאיר כיהן כמנהל המחלקה לכלכלה חקלאית בין השנים 1965 ו-1973, וכדיקן הפקולטה לחקלאות בין השנים 1972 ו-1974. במקביל, הקים את המרכז למחקר בכלכלה חקלאית, ועמד בראשו שנים רבות. לפסגת הקריירה האקדמית שלו הגיע כשמונה בשנת 1978 לפרופסור מן המניין במחלקה לכלכלה של אוניברסיטת שיקגו, לימד שם עד 1997, וזכה להערכה רבה מעמיתיו כמורה, כחוקר וכחבר.
התרומה האקדמית של יאיר באה לידי ביטוי בשני תחומים עיקריים. האחד הוא ניתוחים סטטיסטיים של נתוני פאנל. יאיר היה מהראשונים להבין את הערך הרב שיש לאמידת מודלים סטטיסטיים בעזרת נתונים על יחידות כלכליות שנצפות במשך יותר מתקופת זמן אחת. המאמרים שפרסם בתחום זה נכללים עד היום בסילבוס של כל קורס אקונומטריקה שמכבד את עצמו. על סמך מאמרים אלה זכה לתואר עמית כבוד של האגודה האקונומטרית העולמית בשנת 1970. התחום השני הוא צמיחה כלכלית במדינות מתפתחות שהחקלאות מהווה חלק נכבד מהכלכלה שלהן. המודלים שפיתח בתחום זה יושמו במדינות רבות, בעיקר באמריקה הלטינית, ומשמשים עד היום מוסדות כמו הבנק העולמי. יאיר הטמיע בקהילה האקדמית את התפיסה שאין די בפיתוח או רכישה של טכנולוגיות חקלאיות כדי להביא לצמיחה של המגזר החקלאי, אלא יש לוודא שמתקיימים התנאים לכך שהחקלאים יוכלו לאמץ טכנולוגיות אלה. על תרומתו בתחום זה זכה יאיר לתואר עמית כבוד של האגודה האמריקאית לכלכלה חקלאית בשנת 1993. את מחקריו בתחום החקלאות והצמיחה הכלכלית יאיר סיכם בספר בשם זה, שעל כתיבתו שקד יותר מעשור, שהתפרסם בהוצאת הספרים של אוניברסיטת הרווארד בשנת 2000. באפריל בשנה שעברה כתב את מה שהיה אולי מאמרו האחרון, שעסק בהערות על הדרך שבה משרד החקלאות האמריקאי אומד את פריון היצור בחקלאות. במאגר הפרסומים האקדמיים של גוגל נמצאים 289 פריטים המשויכים ליאיר, שצוטטו מעל 7,800 פעמים, כאשר מספר הציטוטים עדיין גדל משנה לשנה.
היוקרה המקצועית שזכה לה והמעמד הנכבד שהגיע אליו לא גרמו ליאיר להפוך למורם מעם. ביתם של יאיר ויפה בשיקגו היה תמיד פתוח בפני הסטודנטים הישראלים, ובפקולטה לחקלאות ברחובות רבים זוכרים את דמותו החומקת דרך הפרצה בגדר במכנסיים קצרים וסנדלים.
יאיר תרם באופן משמעותי לקריירה של כלכלנים רבים, בארץ ובעולם. הוא יחסר לנו מאד.
חבריו ותלמידיו בפקולטה לחקלאות
Education
Ph.D. Agricultural Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 1957
M.A. Statistics, University of California at Berkeley, 1956
B.S. (Highest Honors) Agricultural Economics,
University of California at Davis, 1953
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
1957-70 Instructor to Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics
1970-91 Ruth Hochberg Professor of Agricultural Economics
1991- Professor (Emeritus) of Agricultural Economics (Early retirement)
1965-73 Head, Department of Agricultural Economics
1972-74 Dean, Faculty of Agriculture
1968-85 Director of Research, The Center for Agricultural Economics Research
2000 - Chairman, The Center for Agricultural Economics Research
Other universities
1961-63 Visiting Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics, University of California, Berkeley
1966-67 Visiting Professor of Economics, The University of Chicago
1974-76 Visiting Professor of Economics, Harvard University
1978-97 F.H. Prince Professor of Economics, The University of Chicago
Research positions
1963(summer) Research Associate, Economics, MIT,
1972 Consultant, Development Research Center, The World Bank.
1973 Visiting Fellow, CORE, Louvain, Belgium
1976-92 Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C.
1990-1995 Advisory Board, Institute for Policy Reform, Washington D.C.
1980-2001 Research consulting to the World Bank
2003 - Research Fellow, Rural Development Research Consortium (University of California, Berkeley)
Other Assignments in Israel
1964-74 Consultant to the Ministry of Agriculture and a member of research committees of the
National Council for Research and Development
1977-88 President, Israel Foundation Trustees
Agriculture and Economic Growth; Theory and Measurement Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000.
Chinese language edition: Beijing, Economic Science Press, 2004.
Sectoral Growth in Chile: 1962-82 (with Juan Eduardo Coeymans) Washington D.C, International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report 95, 1993 (Posted with permission from IFPRI)
Constraints Incentives and the Transformation of Punjab Agriculture: 1960-1980 (With A. McGuirk) Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report 87, 1991. (Posted with permission from IFPRI)
La Argentina, Que Pudo Ser - Los Costos de la Represion Economica, (with Domingo Cavallo and Roberto Domenech), Buenos Aires, Manatial, 1989.
Agriculture and Economic Growth, Argentina 1913-1984 (with D. Cavallo and R. Domenech), Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report 76, 1989. (Posted with permission from IFPRI)
Agricultural and Economic Growth in an Open Economy: The Case of Argentina (with D. Cavallo), Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report 36, 1982, (Award for "Quality of Research Discovery" by the American Agricultural Economic Association). (Posted with permission from IFPRI)
Intersectoral Factor Mobility and Agricultural Growth. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report 6, 1979. (An award paper) (Posted with permission from IFPRI)
The Effects of Free Trade with the Territories on Israel Agriculture (with G. Avni). Rehovot: The Center for Agricultural Economic Research (Hebrew), 1974.
The West Bank and Gaza Strip--Economic Structure and Development Prospects (with H. Ben-Shahar, E. Berglas and E. Sadan). Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1971, 152 pp.
Long Term Projections of Supply and Demand for Agricultural Products in Israel, Jerusalem: Falk Project for Economic Research in Israel 1964. (Hebrew and English, an award book)
Economic Analysis of Established Family Farms in Israel, Jerusalem: Falk Project for Economic Research in Israel, 1964. (Hebrew and English).
Contemporary Economic Issues, Volume 2. Labour, Food and Poverty, Macmillan, 1998.
Arid Zone Development (with F. Singer). Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1977.
Research in Agricultural Economics. Rehovot: The Center for Agricultural Economic Research, 1976 (Hebrew).
Measures of Fixed Capital in Agriculture (with Rita Butzer and Donald F. Larson) Rehovot: The Center for Agricultural Economics Research, Discussion paper 13.10, 2010
"Heterogeneous technology and panel data: The case of the agricultural production function" (with Rita Butzer and Donald F. Larson) Rehovot: The Center for Agricultural Economics Research, Discussion paper 1.08, 2008
"Economic growth: Lessons from two centuries of American agriculture," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XLIII (December 2005) pp. 989-1024.
"Agricultural dynamics in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines," (with D. Larson, and R. Butzer). The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 48:1, pp 95-126, March 2004.
“Intersectoral Migration in Southeast Asia: Evidence from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines" (with R. Butzer, and D. F. Larson). Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Supplement, December 2002
“Intersectoral Migration in Venezuela,” (with R. Butzer and D. Larson) Economic Development and Cultural Change, 50(2)227-248, 2002.
“Explaining Economic Growth,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 83(5):1154-1167, December 2001.
Also appeared in Economic Policy in the International Economy: Essays in Honor of Assaf Razin, ed by Elhanan Helpman, and Efraim Sadka, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
“A Cross-Country Database for Sector Investment and Capital,” (With D. Larson, R. Butzer, and A. Crego) The World Bank Economic Review, 14:371-91, 2000.
“Rethinking Within and Between Regression: The Case of Agricultural Production Functions.” (with D. Larson and R. Butzer). Annales D’Economie et de Statistique, 55-56:475-501, 1999.
On the Intersectoral Migration of Agricultural Labor, (With Donald Larson), Economic Development and Cultural Change, 45(2):295-319, 1997.
“ Production Function Estimation: A Revival of the Primal@ Econometrica, 64:2:431-8, 1996.
“International Comparisons of Cattle cycles” (with He Huang), American Journal of Agricultural Economics, November, 1996. (An award paper)
"On the Empirical Aspects of Economic Growth Theory,” American Economic Review, May 1993.
“The Transition of Punjab Agriculture: A Choice of Technique Approach"
(With A. McGuirk), American Journal of Agricultural Economics (February 1992).
"Endogenous Technology and Sectoral Productivity, Chile 1962-82" (with J. E.
Coeymans), Journal of Productivity analysis 3:257-275, September 1992.
"On the Transmission of World Agricultural Prices" (With D. Larson), World Bank Economic Review, 6(3):399-422, September 1992.
"Agricultural Aggregate Supply Response - Chile, 1962-82", (with J. E. Coeymans), Food Policy, 16:1, 1991
"Agriculture and Growth in Argentina" (with D. Cavallo and R. Domenech), Food Policy, 16:1, 1991.
“On Policy Reforms and Economic Development", American Journal of Agricultural Economics, August 1990.
"Effects of Macroeconomic Policies on Sectoral Prices," (with D. Cavallo and R. Domenech), World Bank Economic Review, 4(1):55-79, 1990.
"On the Determinants of Cross Country Aggregate Agricultural Supply," (with H. P. Binswanger, M-C Yang, and A. Bowers), Journal of Econometrics, 36:111-131, 1987.
"The Intercountry Agricultural Production Function: Another View," (with Rene Hellinghausen) American Journal of Agricultural Economics 64:664-672, 1982.
"Random Effects, Fixed Effects, Convolution and Separation," (with J. Yahav), Econometrica, November 1981.
"On the Concept of Non-Significant Functions and its Implications for Regression Analysis", Journal of Econometrics, 16(1):139-149, 1981.
"On Variable Coefficients Models," Annales de l'insee, France, Avril-Sept. 1978.
"Migration Out of Agriculture -- Empirical Analysis Based on Cross Country Data" Review of Economics and Statistics (1978). Translated into Spanish and appeared in Separata de Cuadernos de Economia 45 (1978).
"Occupational Migration Out of Agriculture in Japan," (with John Strauss), Journal of Development Economics: 5(1)55-71, 1978 .
"On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data," Econometrica (January 1978). (An award paper).
"The Correspondence of Efficiency Frontier as a Generalization of the Costs Function" (with Z. Volcani), in International Economic Review, 14(1):223-233, 1973
"Maximization with Several Objective Functions," in Proceedings of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, 1971, pp. 441-451.
"On Multistage Multiproduct Production Functions," (with A. Razin), American Journal of Agricultural Economics (1971): pp. 491-499.
"Estimation in Linear Models with Log-Normal Dependent Variable" (with D. Bradau). Journal of American Statistical Association (March 1970):441-451.
"Two-Sector Model with Generalized Demand" (with R. Mosenson), Metroeconomica, 22(3):227-258, 1970.
"Further Implications of Distortion in the Factor Market," Econometrica, 38(3):517-532, 1970.
"Aggregation, Index Numbers and the Measurement of Technical Change," (with A. Razin) Review of Economics and Statistics (May 1969).
"Elasticities of Substitution and the Theory of Derived Demand," Review of Economic Studies, 35:225-236, 1968.
"Cross Section Analysis in Economics,” The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968.
"Long-Run Coefficients and Distributed Lag Analysis: A Reformulation," Econometrica, 35(2):278-293, 1967.
"On the Micro-Economic Theory of Distributed Lags," Review of Economics and Statistics 48(1):51-60, 1966.
"Consequences of Alternative Specifications in Estimation of Cobb-Douglas Production Functions," (with I. Hoch) Econometrica: pp. 33(4):814-828, 1965.
"Transcendental Multiproduct Production Functions," International Economic Review 5: 273-284, 1964.
"Specification and Estimation of Multiproduct Production Functions," Journal of Farm Economics 45(2):433-43, 1963.
Aggregation Over Time in Distributed Lag Models," International Economic Review 2(2):154-163, 1961.
"Empirical Production Function Free of Management Bias, "Journal of Farm Economics 43(1): 44-56, 1961. Reappeared in Readings in Economic Statistics and Econometrics, ed. Arnold Zellner (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Co., 1968), pp. 336-348.
"Management and Costs in Agricultural Production,” The Economic Quarterly, 1959 pp. 269-278 (Hebrew).
"A Note on the Symmetry of Homogenous Production Functions and the Three Stages of Production," Journal of Farm Economics 49:756-761, 1958.
"Linear Programming and Agricultural Planning," (with S. Ben David) The Economic Quarterly (1957): 116-26 (Hebrew).
"Economic Consideration in the Design and Evaluation of Production Forecasts," Journal of Farm Economics 38, No. 5 (December 1956): 1492-1500 (An award paper).
"Statistical Analysis of Supply Response in Late Spring Potatoes in California," (with C.O. McCorkle, Jr.). Hilgardia 24, No. 16 (April 1956): April 1956, and Journal of Farm Economics 38, No. 2 (May 1956): 553-569
Yair Mundlak A book review of Bruce Gardner “American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How it flourished and What it Cost,” Journal of Economic Literature, June 2003, pp. 626-8
1956 Best graduate paper, American Farm Economic Association
1957 Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation, American Farm Economic Association
1965 Best published research, American Farm Economic Association for:
Long Term Projections of Supply and Demand for Agricultural Products in Israel, 1964
1965 Bareli Prize, Israel
1972 Rothschild Prize, Israel
1980 Quality of Research Discovery, American Agricultural Economic Association for: Intersectoral Factor Mobility and Agricultural Growth. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report 6, 1979.
1982 Quality of Research Discovery, American Agricultural Economic Association for Agricultural and Economic Growth in an Open Economy: The Case of Argentina (with D. Cavallo), Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report 36, 1982,
1991 "Publication of Enduring Quality", American Agricultural Economic Association for: "On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data," Econometrica, 1978
1997 Honorable mention award for outstanding American Journal of Agricultural Economics article for the paper entitled “International Comparison of Cattle Cycles”, November 1996 (coauthored with He Huang).
1953 Phi Beta Kappa
1966-7 Ford Foundation Research Fellowship, The University of Chicago.
1970 Fellow, The Econometric Society
1973-77 Associate Editor, Journal of Econometrics.
1986 The Marschak Lecture, The Econometric Society Meeting, Cordoba, Argentina
1990-91 Visiting Research Fellowship, the World Bank
1993 Fellow, American Agricultural Economics Association.
1997 The Elmhirst Memorial Lecture at the XXIII International Conference of Agricultural
Economists, Sacramento, CA, August.
1997 The Hibbard Lecture, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
2001 The Frederick V. Waugh Lecture, The American Agricultural Economic Association meeting, Chicago, August 5-8.
2002 The Alan Lloyd Address, Invitation by The Australian Agricultural and Resource Economic Society meeting, Canberra.