Energy Forum 6: Efficiency and Energy Savings in Air Conditioning Systems
Air conditioning systems are currently one of the largest consumers of energy in Israel. 70% of the electricity consumption of a typical office building today is dedicated to air conditioning. The peak demand for electricity in Israel has shifted from winter to summer due to the demand for air conditioning. If it were possible to […]
Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate
This paper relies on the variation of terror attacks across time and space as an instrument to identify the causal effects of terrorism on the preferences of the Israeli electorate. We find that the occurrence of a terror attack within three months of the elections is associated with a 1.35 percentage points increase on the […]
Data and Indicators on Aerospace Engineering, ICT and Biotechnology in Israel
The current report presents data and indicators of three fields of knowledge: Aerospace Engineering, ICT (Information and Communications Technologies), and Biotechnology. The Israeli Aerospace engineering review covers the space plans achievements, the main space institutes, the Aerospace engineering faculty at the Technion, bibliometric data, and military, economy and social aspects of the Israeli space plan. […]
The Economic Consequences of the Use and Control of Land Resources by the Defense Sector in Israel
This article presents and analyzes the economic implications of the use land resources for national defense on both the civilian and defense sectors in Israel and discusses means to increase the efficiency of this use. It introduces a theoretical framework for the analysis of the role of land in a two-period civilian-military model subject to […]
The Ramifications of Technology Transfer Based on Intellectual Property Licensing
The commercialization of scientific inventions by academic institutions was the subject of reform initiatives in recent years. Regulatory initiatives proposed to encourage public research institutions (sometimes even to impose a legal duty), to exploit the commercial potential of their inventions via intellectual property. Recent studies on the impact of the Bayh-Dole Act on scientific research […]
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Investments in Israel STE-WP-37
The main goal of this work is to process and analyze first of its kind industry-level ICT-investments data in Israel between 1990 and 2003. This data enables, for the first time, thorough and detailed examination of the ICT investments and usage in Israel. Based on the data analysis and comparisons to parallel international data sources, […]
Do High-Skill Immigrants Raise Productivity? Evidence from Israeli Manufacturing Firms, 1990-1999 STE-WP-36
During the second part of the 1990s, the Israeli economy experienced a surge in labor productivity and total factor productivity, which was driven primarily by the manufacturing sector. This surge in productivity coincided with the full absorption and integration into the workforce of highly skilled immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The Soviet immigrants were […]
Energy Forum 5: Renewable energy R&D needs
Introduction The Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Research in Science and Technology, within the framework of its activity in the energy field, conducts meetings of the Energy Forum, devoted to discussions and debate over energy related issues of national importace. The Energy Forum holds focused discussions regarding specified themes, and teams of subject-matter experts are […]
Environmental technologies – the green future
The field of environmental technology development includes a very wide range of activities. In the study, which is conducted jointly by the Samuel Neaman Institute, Globes Research and Kesselman & Kesselman, we show that there are very large opportunities in the new market and that the government must take a series of actions realize these […]
Allocating Security Expenditures under Knightian Uncertainty: an Info-Gap Approach
In this paper we demonstrate a methodology aimed at coping with resource allocation under Knightian (non-probabilistic) uncertainty by focusing on the example of competing security measures. The results of this application to security resource allocation also allow us to postulate a possible positivist explanation for the way governments are allocating these expenditures today. We explore […]