Micha Michaeli was born in Kvutzat Kinneret in 1928. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for a master's degree in economics and statistics and pursued doctoral studies in economics at Johns Hopkins University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1955, Michaeli joined the Department of Economics in 1955 and chaired the department from 1961 to 1965 (initially as acting Head replacing Patinkin, who served as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and from 1963 as official Head). He was Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences from 1968 to 1971. In 1977 Michaeli was awarded the Peretz Naftali Prize in Economic and Social Sciences for his book Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development: Israel. He was the third president of the Israeli Economic Association, which honored him in June 2023 with the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award named after David Horowitz, the founder and first Governor of the Bank of Israel. From 1986 to 1993, he served as a Senior Researcher at the World Bank, where he led, with two senior colleagues at the bank, a significant research project on the patterns of trade liberalization in the post-World War II developing world.

His primary research areas included conceptual, empirical, and policy aspects of international economics such as the relationship between exports and economic growth, concentration of international trade, customs unions and economic integration. A significant part of his research was devoted to Israel’s foreign trade and balance of payment with an emphasis on policies in these areas and their implications.
 

Micha Michaeli passed away in Jerusalem in 2023.