Bank of Israel governor wins US economics award

The governor of the Bank of Israel on Sunday won a $100,000 prize from a US nonprofit for an influential research paper he coauthored on long-term asset pricing.

Amir Yaron wrote the paper with Ravi Bansal of Duke University.

The 2004 paper published in the Journal of Finance, titled  “Risks for the Long Run: A Potential Resolution of Asset Pricing Puzzles,” has had outsize influence on researchers’ understanding of expected returns and risks in asset pricing.

Its findings also apply to finance, macroeconomics and other research areas, the Foundation for the Advancement of Research in Financial Economics said.

The nonprofit, which grants the Stephen A. Ross Prize in Financial Economics, works to advance research in the field.

The award is named for an influential MIT and Yale economics professor who is considered one of the world’s leading financial economics researchers.

The biennial prize has been awarded since 2008 to the authors of a paper published in the last 15 years that has made a significant contribution to financial economics. The winners are selected by a committee from the foundation that includes representatives from Princeton University, MIT, Duke University and the University of Maryland.

Yaron is also a professor of banking and finance at the Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania.

He was appointed governor of the Bank of Israel by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sworn in in December 2018.