Don Patinkin
The establishment of an Economics Department in 1949 constitutes a watershed in the practice of economics in Israel as it signals the shift from European-type institutional-historical approach to the American type of abstract mathematical analysis of maximization decisions.
The key figure in this process was Don Patinkin, who got his PhD from the University of Chicago. Although young and inexperienced, Patinkin shaped the department at HU and economics training in later-established institutions in Israel (Gross, 2004; Michaeli, 2005), the same way his generation shaped economics teaching in American research universities at the same time. His success demands an explanation. Here is a young man, 27 at the time of his nomination, arriving at a foreign country, full of European-trained economists and steeped in socialist thinking and Marxian analysis, and yet his leadership has created a free-market oriented economic profession that has played a major role in determining Israeli policies from the 1950s to this day. Patinkin's exceptional aptitude and charisma undoubtedly played a major role, but such a revolutionary change could not happen without the demand in the government for the type of economic knowledge Patinkin championed.Although Patinkin was a novice, he was designated to lead the new department, although the veteran Alfred Bonne was appointed as the Department Chair, a position he held until his death in 1959. During the last four years he served also as the Dean of the new Kaplan School of Economics and Social Sciences. Due to interest in development economics during the postwar period, Bonne suddenly enjoyed international recognition as an original researcher and thinker (Bonne, 1960, 1948, 1957) but Patinkin was still designated for intellectual leadership (Gross, 2004, 2005; Michaeli, 2005).
Patinkin offered for the first time the analytical courses that became the trademark of the postwar American version of neoclassical economics (Yonay, 1998).
Patinkin's book (1956) brought international reputation and secured his academic influence at the HU. More importantly, he used his reputation and connections in the US to secure fellowships to fund the studies of his brightest students at the best universities, and they were nominated as lecturers upon their return. Those students — e.g. Michael Michaeli, Haim Barkai, Nissan Leviathan, Nadav Halevi, Reuben Gronau, and Menachem Yaari — became the “founding fathers” of the economic profession in Israel as it is seen today. They gained high reputation in the US and continued Patinkin's very close relationships with the American profession. Today this is common in many countries, but in the case of Israel it started as early as the 1950s and contributed to its prominence in economics to this day.Although Patinkin bolstered the American side of the new department, for several more years other directions were present at the department. Bonne and his student Hershlag (1914—99) taught economics of the Middle East and Israel using the historical-institutional approach. Bonne saw Hershlag as his successor, but Patinkin did not like his style of research and tried to block the approval of his dissertation first and his nomination later (Gross, 2004), and indeed Hershlag did not become a lecturer at HU and the Bonne tradition of historical and institutional studies did not have a continuation. He did develop a successful career, however, at the defunct Department of Developing Countries at Tel-Aviv University, and published several well-regarded books on Middle East economics and especially on Turkey (e.g. 1964, 1958).
In the early 1950s the university nominated another prominent European economist, Edmond Silberner (1910—85; PhD Geneva) to teach economic history (EH) and history of economic thought (HET) (Michaeli, 2005; Gross, 2004). Until the triumph of mathematical economics in the 1960s, HET and EH were required courses in many undergraduate and graduate programs in the US, and in Europe it has continued to be required.
HU leaders were aware of this fact and brought Silberner (1939, 1946, 1962) to teach these courses. Yet Silberner failed to make these courses a mainstay of the economic training program at HU. He remained part of the faculty until his retirement but failed to have an influence on the direction of the department. As in most major American universities, HET disappeared, but EH has survived due to the works of Nachum Gross (1972), Gur Ofer (1973), Jacob Metzer (1998), and, currently, Nathan Sussman (Mauro, Sussman, and Yafeh, 2006).During the 1950s there was an attempt at establishing chairs in labor movement history and cooperative theory. The idea was pushed forward by top Histadrut leaders and by Jewish union leaders from the US who pledged funding for this goal. Between 1950 and 1956 three nominations were made in this field, but none of them led to permanent positions: Harry (Zvi) Viteles, a specialist on cooperatives (1966—70) and a manager of a bank founded to support cooperatives; Ferdynand Zweig (1896—1988), a Polish lawyer who taught political economy at Krakow University before World War Two on labor relations and continued to conduct research in London and Manchester University, and published 13 books prior to his nomination (e.g. 1959, 1975); and Henrik F. Infield, an expert on cooperatives who got his PhD from the University of Wien in 1925 (1944, 1947, 1955).
Gross (2004) and Michaeli (2005) write about the eventual failure of the above scholars — Hershlag, Silberner, Viteles, Zweig, Infield — as unavoidable given their inept scholarship. But looking from the outside one can suspect that the reason is different. All of them were considered experts in their fields and published plentifully, but their approach differed from Patinkin’s, and Patinkin set the standards for what was considered “good economic research” at HU. Approaches that deviated from his were either abandoned or pushed to other disciplines such as sociology and history.