Israel: A Virgin land for Chinese Business An Interview with Israel Ambassador

In the beginning of November, Israel has given an official recognition to China ‘s status of complete market economy. What is the significance of this event? What influence will Israel ‘s recognition bring to the bilateral economic and trade relations ? etc. With these questions born in mind, China‘s Foreign Trade magazine interviewed Dr. Yehoyada Haim, Israel Ambassador in November.……     

Israel as a foreign aid donor

The formation of Israel and the growth of its economy have astounded the nations of the world. The world “miraculous” has often been used to describe the way in which a tiny nation, born in a hostile neighborhood in 1948, not only managed to survive but became a source of valuable technical assistance to other emerging nations and, in many cases, to nations that have existed many times longer than it has. The objective of this analysis is to examine the purpose, history and scope of the technical assistance that Israel is extending to some 60 nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia.     

Israel,China to Strengthen Water Technology Cooperation

To turn desert into oasis is the top priority of the water-poor Israel.The country has made miraculous achievements in turning arid land into fertile agricultural farmland.Now Israel hopes to strengthen cooperation with China in     

Israel,China to Strengthen Water Technology Cooperation

<正>To turn desert into oasis is the top priority of the water-poor Israel.The country has made miraculous achievements in turning arid land into fertile agricul...     

Comparing the Israel–Palestinian Dispute to Australian Family Mediation

‘For decades the Israel–Palestinian conflict has been characterized as intractable, inextricable, and the root cause of suffering and misery for many of the people who live in the Middle East region’. Whilst it would be unwise to expect that the solution to this problem can be provided by negotiation support systems, we believe such systems can provide useful advice and allow disputants to more adequately understand their goals and support them to perform the trade-offs necessary to arrive at acceptable solutions. Given our research on interested based negotiation support systems to provide family mediation advice, we pose the question about the ability of such systems to provide useful advice about the Israel–Palestinian dispute. We examine the differences between family mediation and international conflict resolution and reflect upon whether results from the former can provide useful advice in the latter. After identifying the issues in dispute and each of the disputant’s goals, the data is fed into the Asset Divider system. The system allows users to engage in testing the potential outcome of their dispute given their beliefs and goals. The system hence outlines to users the consequences of insisting upon their stances. The outcome proposed by the system given trial data, is similar to the successful Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, where Israel gave up territory for recognition and security.     

Provision of Public Services to the Post-Nomadic Bedouin Society in Israel

Bedouin nomads in southern Israel have been sedentarising and semi-urbanising in recent decades. During this process, they have become part of a public service provision system. This is a unique process as usually nomads rely on internal resources for attaining the goals of these services, whereas here they are obliged to use external resources. Such a process, therefore, is bound to be a conflictual one with many barriers. An analysis of provision of public educational and health services reveals that they have been spatially, functionally and culturally constrained, thus putting the Bedouin within a stressful situation.     

Liberalising Trends in Israel's Trade Policy: Trade Policy Review of Israel

Israeli authorities have been generally efficient in implementing gradual, mostly unilateral, liberalisation of their country's trade policy regime, with agriculture and related activities being the only major exceptions to the rule. This trend reflects a broad consensus among major political parties in Israel in pursuing liberal trade policy reforms. An alternative interpretation of the liberalising trend is that protectionist pressures from organised sectoral lobbies were either weak or inefficient.     

Control of unfair terms in consumer contracts in Israel: Law and practice

This paper explains the need for both administrative and judicial control of unfair terms in standard contracts. The 1982 Israel Standard Contracts Law involves both guided judicial review and administrative control by a Standard Contracts Tribunal. Presented here is an analysis of the enforcement of the law rather than a purely theoretical approach. The Tribunal's involvement is much more effective than that of the courts as revealed by the remarkably small number of published court decisions. One can attribute the Tribunal's success to the close cooperation between the Ministry of Justice and the consumer organizations. The example of construction contracts was selected to illustrate the effective control of the Tribunal; however, weaknesses of the system are not disregarded and suggestions for amendments are proposed. A major conclusion reached is that administrative control is more effective than judicial control. A second conclusion is that the future lies in involuntary administrative control, a trend already in progress in the Israeli legal system.

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Die Kontrolle unfairer Klauseln in Kaufverträgen mit Konsumenten in Israel

Zusammenfassung Die meisten Kaufverträge sind Standardverträge und enthalten folglich häufig unfaire Klauseln. Zum Schutz berechtigter Verbraucherinteressen ist deshalb eine Kontrolle solcher Verträge nötig. Das israelische Gesetz über allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen aus dem Jahre 1982 führte eine doppelte Kontrolle ein: zum einen eine gerichtliche Überprüfung und zum andern eine Verwaltungskontrolle in Form eines Sonderverfahrens für allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen (Standard Contracts Tribunal). Die wesentlichen Züge dieses Gesetzes werden skizziert. Besondere Bedeutung wird innovativen Elementen, wie der Anwendungsbreite und der mutmaßlichen Unbilligkeit bestimmter Klauseln, beigemessen. Die Struktur und Vorgehensweise des Sonderverfahrens werden diskutiert.Der Beitrag bietet eine Analyse des Vollzuges des Gesetzes durch gerichtliche Entscheidungen und einen Überblick über die Tätigkeit des Sonderverfahrens. Dabei zeigt sich einerseits, daß die Gerichte nur selten befaßt waren und nur wenige Fälle veröffentlicht wurden, andererseits, daß die Durchführung des Sonderverfahrens wesentlich effektiver und besser organisiert war. Der relative Erfolg der Verwaltungskontrolle durch dieses Sonderverfahren beruht zu einem erheblichen Teil auf der aktiven Rolle des Justizministeriums und der Verbraucherorganisationen. Das Ministerium erarbeitete Richtlinien, nach denen die Standardverträge und allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen zur Überprüfung ausgewählt wurden. Kaufverträge für Wohneigentum werden herangezogen, um die Effektivität des Sonderverfahrens zu illustrieren.Die Verwaltungskontrolle durch das Sonderverfahren ist zwar nicht frei von bestimmten Schwachpunkten, und der Beitrag macht einige Vorschläge für Verbesserungen, die auch den gesetzgebenden Körperschaften in Israel übermittelt wurden.Was aber insgesamt die Effektivität anbelangt, so zeigt sich eine Überlegenheit der Verwaltungskontrolle gegenüber der gerichtlichen Überprüfung. In Zukunft sollte die Vorlage von allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen zur Prüfung vor dem Sonderverfahren eine Mußvorschrift werden. Der Übergang von freiwilliger zur Pflichtkontrolle könnte — zusammen mit anderen Regelungen — den Schutz des Konsumenten vor unfairen Vertragsbestimmungen weiter verbessern.

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Sinai Deutch is Professor of Consumer Law, Bar-Ilan Faculty of Law, Ramat-Gan, Israel 52100, and Legal Adviser to the Histadrut Consumer Protection Authority. The article is based on a lecture given in the 1st International Conference on Consumer Law in Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 1989.     

Assessing the employment effectiveness of small business financing schemes: Some evidence from Israel

This paper presents an empirical assessment of the employment effects of two assistance schemes aimed at improving the accessibility of small businesses to capital. The first scheme is a revolving loan fund operating in two small towns. The second is a capital grant scheme aimed at promoting industrial activity in rural areas. Empirical data relating to the period 1986–89 is analysed for both schemes.The employment effectiveness of the loan fund is analysed via the estimation of cost-per-job indices and the estimation of the deadweight effect, i.e., employment that would have been created even in the absence of the financing scheme. For the grant scheme, the methodology implemented involves the use of regression techniques in order to isolate the effect of the financial assistance on employment generation. The results point to the cost-effectiveness of this form of assistance. From a public policy point of view, the need for targeting these type of schemes (both spatially and sectorally), is stressed.     

Israel M. Kirzner: An Outstanding Austrian Contributor to the Economics of Entrepreneurship

Israel M. Kirzner is the 2006 winner of The International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research. In this essay, we present and evaluate his main contributions to the economics of entrepreneurship. The focus is on how Kirzner defines the entrepreneurial function. In order to better understand his theory, we posit Kirzner’s notion of an entrepreneur in the Austrian tradition. In so doing we emphasize that this concept opens up different perspectives as compared to the neoclassical theoretical framework. The three areas of economic policy, justice and freedom, and economic growth are discussed. We also show why the Kirznerian entrepreneur makes these issues relevant. Perhaps most importantly, Kirzner has made the Austrian School intelligible for non-Austrians. By bridging the chasm between Austrian and mainstream thinking, the crucial role of entrepreneurship and the individual entrepreneur has become visible to a much broader audience.     

以色列人工智能发展现状分析及政策举措

目前,世界上许多国家都在竞相发展人工智能,以创新创业见长的以色列在人工智能方面也作出了重要部署,并有突出的表现。本文基于以色列创新署发布的《2019年创新报告》等报告及数据,着重分析了以色列近年来在人工智能方面取得的成就和当前发展所面临的障碍,以及以色列为保持现有优势并进一步推动人工智能发展的政策举措,旨在为我国人工智能的发展提供参考借鉴。     

Negotiators’ Attitudes toward Signing Business Contracts: Evidence from Greece and Israel

This study extends beyond negotiation process and styles, and focuses on negotiators’ tendency to sign formal contracts. Drawing on a risk mitigation perspective, it examines the influence of businesspeople's levels of horizontal and vertical individualism‐collectivism, ethical idealism, and trust propensity on their attitudes toward signing formal negotiated business contracts in Greece and in Israel. A survey questionnaire was translated from English to Greek and to Hebrew, and 649 responses were collected from employees who worked in industries such as banking, insurance, construction, manufacturing, retailing, and tourism in the Greek and Israeli private and public sectors. Our findings suggest that higher levels of horizontal individualism, horizontal collectivism, and ethical idealism increase employees’ tendency to sign formal contracts, whereas lower levels of general trust are associated with a higher propensity to sign formal contracts. Interestingly, employees’ propensity to sign formal contracts was significantly lower in Israel than in Greece. We argue that the propensity to sign formal contracts, and thus to mitigate potential agreement risks, is dependent on the individuals’ cultural and personal attributes. The study provides practitioners with a set of cultural and individual attributes that can serve as predictors of negotiators’ predisposition toward signing business contracts. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

What Would Normalisation of Economic Relations Between Mashrek Countries,Turkey and Israel Imply?

This article examines the potential for economic cooperation among Mashrek countries, Turkey and Israel in the fields of trade in goods and services both separately and across‐field. It first describes the macroeconomic features of the region and then estimates the overall potential for inter‐industry trade in goods by estimating gravity equations for each country separately and the potential for intra‐industry trade using Grubel‐Lloyd indices. The article also examines the potential for trade in specific services, namely information and computer technology, transport, financial and health services.     

The role of elasticity optimism in choosing an optimal currency basket with applications to Israel

In a world in which exchange rates are floating each country must have some device for measuring the average exchange rate change, whatever exchange rate policy it chooses. The weight for each currency in computing such an average depends on the objective which exchange rate stabilization, or change, is expected to achieve. If balance of trade stability is the desideratum, the optimum weights (optimum currency basket) are shown to be a function of demand elasticities, GNP, trade shares, etc. We derive a loss function measuring the cost of using a ‘wrong’ basket, and compute the value of this function for our ‘optimal’ Israeli basket as a case study.