Zvi Hercowitz


Zvi Hercowitz is an Israeli economist and economics professor. He was born in Rosario, Argentina, on December 21, 1945, and he emigrated to Israel in December 1965. In October 1969, after serving in the army, he began his studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he received his B.A. in Economics in February 1973 and his M.A. in Economics in July 1975.
Hercowitz then enrolled at the University of Rochester. His areas of specialization were Macro and Monetary Economics and International Economics. In 1980, he completed his Ph.D. dissertation, "Money and the Dispersion of Relative Prices", under the supervision of Robert Barro.
Hercowitz joined Tel Aviv University in 1980, where he remains today. He also serves as an advisor to the Bank of Israel. He has been a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan, the University of Rochester, and the University of Western Ontario.
Hercowitz is best known for the idea of investment specific technological change, formulating the zero-income effect utility function for labor, and introducing both capacity utilization and household production theory into macroeconomics.