Menahem E. Yaari

Menahem E. Yaari was born in 1935 in Jerusalem

Menahem Yaari was born in Jerusalem on April 26, 1935. His father was the writer Yehuda Yaari, who came to the country in the Third Aliyah.

From 1952 to 1955 he served in the Nahal. He then studied economics and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, finishing his B.A. in 1958. He earned a Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1962, under Kenneth Arrow and Herbert Scarf.

He taught economics at Yale University and later joined the Hebrew University, where he became a full professor in 1971 and held a chair in mathematical economics. He headed the economics department from 1971 to 1973 and was a co-editor of Econometrica from 1968 to 1975. From 1985 to 1992 he headed the university's Institute for Advanced Studies.

He was president of the Open University of Israel from 1992 to 1997. In 1994 he was named to the state commission of inquiry into the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. He led the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities from 2004 to 2010.

In 2023 he signed a letter by economists warning about the economic effects of the judicial reform. That year he also joined a request by 91 scientists and artists to join petitions against canceling the reasonableness standard.