Israeli British economist
Zvi Safra (Hebrew : צבי ספרא ) is an Israeli and British economist and decision theorist . Safra is a professor at the Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick an emeritus professor at the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University . Safra is an editor at the Journal of Economics and Philosophy and an elected fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory . Safra was formerly a Vice-Chancellor at the Israeli College of Management Academic Studies .
Academic career
Safra obtained his degrees in mathematics and economics from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem , including a Ph.D. under Menachem E. Yaari and Yves Balasko in 1983.
In that year, Safra was accepted as a Rothschild Foundation fellow ,[ 1] and was invited to stay as a post-doc at Harvard University. Upon his return to Israel, he joined as a faculty member at Tel Aviv University , where he remained until 2005. Over these years, he served as the head of the Ph.D. program at the Coller School of Management.[ 2]
During 2006–2010, Safra served as the Vice Chancellor of the Israeli College of Management Academic Studies .[ 3] [ 4]
Safra moved to the University of Warwick in 2013 after serving two years as the head of the Ph.D. program at the University of Exeter Business School .[ 5] [ 6]
In 2020, Safra was selected as an Economic Theory Fellow by Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory .[ 7]
Research
Safra's body of work is in the fields of individual choice under risk and under uncertainty, bargaining , and social choice . His main contribution to decision theory is the rigorous analysis of the preference reversal phenomenon[ 8] [ 9] and the demonstration that for individuals who violate the independence axiom , the Becker, DeGroot and Marshack mechanism of utility elicitation may fail.[ 10] [ 11]
His contribution was cited hundreds of times, including by several Nobel prize winners in economics: Daniel Kahnman ,[ 12] Alvin Roth in his Handbook of Experimental Economics,[ 13] Richard Thaler [ 14] and Vernon Smith .[ 15]
Other contributions to decision theory include the pioneering analysis of risk aversion in the rank-dependent model,[ 16] [ 17] the first analysis of auctions without expected utility ,[ 18] [ 19] and the discovery that not only expected utility, but all known models of decision under risk are vulnerable to Matthew Rabin 's calibration criticism.[ 20] [ 21]
His main contribution to bargaining theory is the extension of the axiomatic Nash bargaining solution to ordinal and non-expected utility preferences.[ 22] [ 23] His main contributions to social choice theory include an axiomatization of individual behavior that is motivated by an intrinsic sense of fairness,[ 24] [ 25] and an extension of Harsanyi's impartial observer model that can accommodate concerns for fairness and different individuals’ risk attitudes, and that yields the Prioritarian social welfare function as a special case.[ 26] [ 27]
References
^ "Rothschild Fellows list" (PDF) .
^ "Zvi Safra" . Tel Aviv University .
^ "Prof. Zvi Safra" . Coller School of Management .
^ "מינוי במסלול האקדמי המכללה למינהל" . News1 (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2023-12-06 .
^ "Zvi Safra" .
^ "Economics brochure by University of Exeter - Issuu" . issuu.com . 2013-06-12.
^ "Economic Theory Fellows" . SAET .
^ Safra, Zvi; Segal, Uzi; Spivak, Avia (1990). "Preference Reversal and Nonexpected Utility Behavior" . The American Economic Review . 80 (4): 922– 930. ISSN 0002-8282 . JSTOR 2006717 .
^ Kagel, John H.; Battalio, Raymond C.; Green, Leonard (1995-01-27). Economic Choice Theory: An Experimental Analysis of Animal Behavior . Cambridge University Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-521-45488-9 .
^ Karni, Edi; Safra, Zvi (May 1987). " "Preference Reversal" and the Observability of Preferences by Experimental Methods" . Econometrica . 55 (3): 675. doi :10.2307/1913606 . JSTOR 1913606 .
^ Guala, Francesco (2005-08-01). The Methodology of Experimental Economics . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-32086-4 .
^ Tversky, Amos; Slovic, Paul; Kahneman, Daniel (1990). "The Causes of Preference Reversal" . The American Economic Review . 80 (1): 204– 217. ISSN 0002-8282 . JSTOR 2006743 .
^ The Handbook of Experimental Economics . Princeton University Press. 1995. doi :10.2307/j.ctvzsmff5 . ISBN 978-0-691-04290-9 . JSTOR j.ctvzsmff5 . S2CID 243594157 .
^ Thaler, Richard H. (1994). The winner's curse : paradoxes and anomalies of economic life . Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01934-7 . OCLC 28377102 .
^ Smith, Vernon L. (1991). "Rational Choice: The Contrast between Economics and Psychology" . Journal of Political Economy . 99 (4): 877– 897. doi :10.1086/261782 . ISSN 0022-3808 . JSTOR 2937784 . S2CID 7858725 .
^ Machina, Mark J. (1992), Dionne, Georges; Harrington, Scott E. (eds.), "Choice Under Uncertainty: Problems Solved and Unsolved" , Foundations of Insurance Economics: Readings in Economics and Finance , Huebner International Series on Risk, Insurance and Economic Security, vol. 14, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 49– 82, doi :10.1007/978-94-015-7957-5_2 , ISBN 978-94-015-7957-5 , retrieved 2022-07-16
^ Hong, Chew Soo; Karni, Edi; Safra, Zvi (August 1987). "Risk aversion in the theory of expected utility with rank dependent probabilities" . Journal of Economic Theory . 42 (2): 370– 381. doi :10.1016/0022-0531(87)90093-7 .
^ Karni, Edi; Safra, Zvi (July 1989). "Dynamic Consistency, Revelations in Auctions and the Structure of Preferences" . The Review of Economic Studies . 56 (3): 421. doi :10.2307/2297556 . JSTOR 2297556 .
^ Starmer, Chris (June 2000). "Developments in Non-expected Utility Theory: The Hunt for a Descriptive Theory of Choice under Risk" . Journal of Economic Literature . 38 (2): 332– 382. doi :10.1257/jel.38.2.332 . ISSN 0022-0515 .
^ Wakker, Peter P. (2010-07-22). Prospect Theory: For Risk and Ambiguity . Cambridge University Press. pp. 191, 221, 245, 351, 382, 467, 478, 485. ISBN 978-1-139-48910-2 .
^ Uzi, Safra, Zvi Segal. Calibration results for non-expected utility theories . Boston College, Dept. of Economics. OCLC 836653937 . {{cite book }}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link )
^ Rubinstein, Ariel; Safra, Zvi; Thomson, William (September 1992). "On the Interpretation of the Nash Bargaining Solution and Its Extension to Non-Expected Utility Preferences" . Econometrica . 60 (5): 1171. doi :10.2307/2951543 . ISSN 0012-9682 . JSTOR 2951543 .
^ Osborne, Martin J.; Rubinstein, Ariel (1994-07-12). A Course in Game Theory . MIT Press. pp. 312, 335. ISBN 978-0-262-65040-3 .
^ Karni, Edi; Safra, Zvi (January 2002). "Individual Sense of Justice: A Utility Representation" . Econometrica . 70 (1): 263– 284. doi :10.1111/1468-0262.00275 . ISSN 0012-9682 .
^ Köbberling, Veronika; Wakker, Peter P. (2005-05-01). "An index of loss aversion" . Journal of Economic Theory . 122 (1): 119– 131. doi :10.1016/j.jet.2004.03.009 . ISSN 0022-0531 .
^ "Generalized Utilitarianism and Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem" . Econometrica . 78 (6): 1939– 1971. 2010. doi :10.3982/ecta6712 . hdl :10036/4331 . ISSN 0012-9682 . S2CID 10759451 .
^ Pathak, Parag A.; Sethuraman, Jay (January 2011). "Lotteries in student assignment: An equivalence result: Lotteries in student assignment" . Theoretical Economics . 6 (1): 1– 17. doi :10.3982/TE816 . hdl :10419/150145 . S2CID 215822430 .
External links