Ariel Rubinstein

Ariel Rubinstein was born in 1951 in Jerusalem

Rubinstein was born in 1951 in the Tel Arza neighborhood of Jerusalem. His parents, Leah and Yehuda, came to Israel from Białystok in the 1930s. His sister was the musician Bat-Sheva Rubinstein.

He went to the Sokolov and Beit HaYeled schools and the Hebrew University Secondary School, and served as an officer in the Artillery Corps. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem he earned a B.A. in 1974, an M.A. in economics in 1975 and an M.Sc. in mathematics in 1976. He received his PhD in economics in 1979 under Menahem Yaari.

After postdoctoral work at Nuffield College and Bell Labs, he joined the Hebrew University faculty in 1981 and became a full professor in 1985. In 1990 he moved to Tel Aviv University, where he became professor emeritus in 2019. He also held part-time posts at Princeton University from 1990 to 2003 and at New York University from 2003.

His research covers game theory, bounded rationality, choice theory, economics and language, and experimental economics. He views economic models as fables and doubts their use for predictions or policy. He served as President of the Econometric Society in 2004.

He co-founded the Movement for Another Zionism and was among the initiators of the Officers' Letter in 1978 and of Peace Now. He led a group of Tel Aviv University faculty that worked to improve conditions for contract workers. He was married to former ambassador Yael Rubinstein and has two children.