Elise Brezis
| Elise S. Brezis | |
|---|---|
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| Institution | Bar-Ilan University |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor |
Paul Krugman Rüdiger Dornbusch |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Elise Scheiner Brezis, professor of Economics at Bar-Ilan University, is the director of the Azrieli Center for Economic Policy. She has been the head of the Statistics division at the Research Department in the Bank of Israel, and from 1999 to 2003, she was the President of the Israeli Association for the Study of European Integration. She holds a PhD in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989).
Her first works in economic history were on 18th century England and are where she developed previously nonexistent data on the balance of payments of the UK. Her research interests are related to economic growth. Her main works are in two fields: the first is the interaction between sociology and economics emphasizing the stratification of society and focusing on the elites; the second is technology, demography and economic growth. In the former, she has been on the forefront of research in the field of elites. In the latter, her most cited work dealing with technology and growth on leapfrogging in international competition, a paper on the theory of cycles in national technological leadership that she worked on with Paul Krugman, published in the American Economic Review in 1993. She is also a fellow at the Minerva Center for Growth in Jerusalem and serves on the editorial board of Cliometrica.
Brezis examines the evolution of recruitment of elites and investigates the nature of the links between recruitment of elites and economic growth. The main change that occurred in the way the Western world recruited its elites is that meritocracy became the basis for their recruitment. Although meritocratic selection should result in the best being chosen, she shows that meritocratic recruitment actually leads to class stratification and auto-recruitment.
Brezis's book examines the relationship between elites, minorities, and economic growth. The novelty of the book lies in its focus on the interaction between social and economic changes during economic growth.
1. In Brezis's work with Krugman, they emphasized that endogenous-growth theory suggests that technological change tends to reinforce the position of the leading nations. Yet sometimes this leadership role shifts. They suggest a mechanism that explains this pattern of 'leapfrogging' as a response to occasional major changes in technology.
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