Amir Yaron

Amir Yaron was born in 1964 in Tel Aviv

Amir Yaron was born in 1964 and grew up in Ramat HaSharon and Ramat Gan, where he attended the Ussishkin School. His father Yaakov was an economist who worked at Bank Hapoalim and later at the World Bank, which took the family to the United States. His mother was a teacher and a psychologist.

From 1985 to 1989 he served as an IDF officer under the economic advisor to the Chief of Staff, and was discharged as a captain. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in economics at Tel Aviv University, finishing the master's with distinction in 1989. He then received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1994, supervised by Lars Peter Hansen.

He taught at Carnegie Mellon University from 1994 to 1997 and joined the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. He became an associate professor in 2004 and Robert Morris Professor of Banking in 2009. His research covers asset pricing, investment, international markets and macroeconomics.

A 2004 study he wrote with Ravi Bansal offered an explanation for the higher long-term return of stocks over bonds, linking it to long-term macroeconomic risk. In 2019 the work earned him the Stephen A. Ross Prize in financial economics.

In October 2018 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon announced they would recommend him to succeed Karnit Flug. He took office as Governor of the Bank of Israel on December 24, 2018.