Professor Yoram Barzel’sRetirement Celebration

November 25, 2014

Professor Yoram Barzel joined the UW Department of

Economics in 1961. A prolific and lifelong

researcher, Prof. Barzel’spioneering work in

transaction cost economics and property rights has been

fundamental to the development of New

Institutional Economics.

When Yoram Barzelwas a teenager in Israel in the late

1940’s, newspaper columns about

economics sparked his interest in the

subject.

Professor Eugene Silberberg’s

Retirement Party, June 2008

Professors Yoram Barzel, Richard Parks, and Eric Zivot.

In the summer of 1961 Barzel was hired by the

Department of Economics as an

Assistant Professor to teach microeconomics

and econometrics, joining a faculty corps that included would-be

Nobel Laureate Douglass North and

Don Gordon.

A year later he was joined by Walter Oi.

Another new Assistant Professor, Judith Thornton, also started teaching in 1961; and 53 years later she, too, is still teaching in the department.

Yoram and Judy’s 50th

Teaching Anniversary Celebration,

October 2011

Professor Barzel has published dozens of

influential works, first on estimation of cost and

production functions, later moving into property rights and transaction

costs, and more recently delving into the political

economy.

Retirement Party for Brenda Snell,

June 2012.

Yoram has written four books, the most recent being A Theory of the State: Economic Rights, Legal Rights, and the Scope of the State (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

His book Economic Analysis of Property Rights (Cambridge University Press 1989) is in its second edition and has been translated into Chinese and Japanese.

Yoram with Assistant Professor

Hendrik Wolff, Commencement

2014

Yoram’s 70th Birthday at the

UW Faculty Club

Celebrating Michael Hadjimikalakis’

Retirement ,June 2014