Zvi Safra

❧

Wikipedia

Zvi Safra (Hebrew: צבי ספרא) is an Israeli and British economist and decision theorist. Safra is a professor at the Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick and an emeritus professor at the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University. Safra is an elected fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory and was previously an editor at Economics & Philosophy. Safra was formerly a Vice-Chancellor at the Israeli College of Management Academic Studies.

Zvi Safra
צבי ספרא
Born (1952-03-08) March 8, 1952 (age 73)
Jerusalem, Israel
CitizenshipIsrael and United Kingdom
Alma materThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Scientific career
FieldsEconomics
Doctoral advisorMenahem E. Yaari
Yves Balasko

Academic career

Safra obtained his degrees in mathematics and economics from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, including a Ph.D. under Menachem E. Yaari and Yves Balasko in 1983.

In that year, Safra was accepted as a Rothschild Foundation fellow,[1] and was invited to stay as a post-doc at Harvard University. Upon his return to Israel, he joined as a faculty member at Tel Aviv University, where he remained until 2005. Over these years, he served as the head of the Ph.D. program at the Coller School of Management.[2]

During 2006–2010, Safra served as the Vice Chancellor of the Israeli College of Management Academic Studies.[3][4]

Safra moved to the University of Warwick in 2013 after serving two years as the head of the Ph.D. program at the University of Exeter Business School.[5][6]

In 2020, Safra was selected as an Economic Theory Fellow by Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory.[7]

Research

Safra's body of work is in the fields of individual choice under risk and under uncertainty, bargaining, and social choice. His main contribution to decision theory is the rigorous analysis of the preference reversal phenomenon[zs 1][8] and the demonstration that for individuals who violate the independence axiom, the Becker, DeGroot and Marshack mechanism of utility elicitation may fail.[zs 2][9]

His contribution was cited hundreds of times, including by several Nobel prize winners in economics: Daniel Kahneman,[10] Alvin Roth in his Handbook of Experimental Economics,[11] Richard Thaler[12] and Vernon Smith.[13]

Other contributions to decision theory include the pioneering analysis of risk aversion in the rank-dependent model,[14][zs 3] the first analysis of auctions without expected utility,[zs 4][15] and the discovery that not only expected utility, but all known models of decision under risk are vulnerable to Matthew Rabin's calibration criticism.[16][zs 5]

His main contribution to bargaining theory is the extension of the axiomatic Nash bargaining solution to ordinal and non-expected utility preferences.[zs 6][17] His main contributions to social choice theory include an axiomatization of individual behavior that is motivated by an intrinsic sense of fairness,[zs 7][18] and an extension of Harsanyi's impartial observer model that can accommodate concerns for fairness and different individuals’ risk attitudes, and that yields the Prioritarian social welfare function as a special case.[19][20]

References

  1. ↑ "Rothschild Fellows list" (PDF). Yad Hanadiv (The Rothschild Foundation).
  2. ↑ "Zvi Safra (profile)". Tel Aviv University.
  3. ↑ "Prof. Zvi Safra (profile)". Coller School of Management.
  4. ↑ "מינוי במסלול האקדמי המכללה למינהל" [Appointment to the College of Administration]. News1 (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2023-12-06.
  5. ↑ "Zvi Safra (profile)". Warwick Business School.
  6. ↑ Economics brochure. University of Exeter Business School. 2013-06-12 – via issuu.com.
  7. ↑ "Economic Theory Fellows". Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory. Retrieved 16 October 2025 – via University of Iowa.
  8. ↑ Kagel, John H.; Battalio, Raymond C.; Green, Leonard (1995-01-27). Economic Choice Theory: An Experimental Analysis of Animal Behavior. Cambridge University Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-521-45488-9.
  9. ↑ Guala, Francesco (2005-08-01). The Methodology of Experimental Economics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-32086-4.
  10. ↑ Tversky, Amos; Slovic, Paul; Kahneman, Daniel (1990). "The Causes of Preference Reversal". The American Economic Review. 80 (1): 204–217. ISSN 0002-8282. JSTOR 2006743.
  11. ↑ The Handbook of Experimental Economics. Princeton University Press. 1995. doi:10.2307/j.ctvzsmff5. ISBN 978-0-691-04290-9. JSTOR j.ctvzsmff5. S2CID 243594157.
  12. ↑ Thaler, Richard H. (1994). The winner's curse : paradoxes and anomalies of economic life. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01934-7. OCLC 28377102.
  13. ↑ Smith, Vernon L. (1991). "Rational Choice: The Contrast between Economics and Psychology". Journal of Political Economy. 99 (4): 877–897. doi:10.1086/261782. ISSN 0022-3808. JSTOR 2937784. S2CID 7858725.
  14. ↑ Machina, Mark J. (1992), Dionne, Georges; Harrington, Scott E. (eds.), "Choice Under Uncertainty: Problems Solved and Unsolved", Foundations of Insurance Economics: Readings in Economics and Finance, Huebner International Series on Risk, Insurance and Economic Security, vol. 14, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 49–82, doi:10.1007/978-94-015-7957-5_2, ISBN 978-94-015-7957-5, retrieved 2022-07-16{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  15. ↑ Starmer, Chris (June 2000). "Developments in Non-expected Utility Theory: The Hunt for a Descriptive Theory of Choice under Risk". Journal of Economic Literature. 38 (2): 332–382. doi:10.1257/jel.38.2.332. ISSN 0022-0515.
  16. ↑ Wakker, Peter P. (2010-07-22). Prospect Theory: For Risk and Ambiguity. Cambridge University Press. pp. 191, 221, 245, 351, 382, 467, 478, 485. ISBN 978-1-139-48910-2.
  17. ↑ Osborne, Martin J.; Rubinstein, Ariel (1994-07-12). A Course in Game Theory. MIT Press. pp. 312, 335. ISBN 978-0-262-65040-3.
  18. ↑ Köbberling, Veronika; Wakker, Peter P. (2005-05-01). "An index of loss aversion". Journal of Economic Theory. 122 (1): 119–131. doi:10.1016/j.jet.2004.03.009. ISSN 0022-0531.
  19. ↑ "Generalized Utilitarianism and Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem". Econometrica. 78 (6): 1939–1971. 2010. doi:10.3982/ecta6712. hdl:10036/4331. ISSN 0012-9682. S2CID 10759451.
  20. ↑ Pathak, Parag A.; Sethuraman, Jay (January 2011). "Lotteries in student assignment: An equivalence result: Lotteries in student assignment". Theoretical Economics. 6 (1): 1–17. doi:10.3982/TE816. hdl:10419/150145. S2CID 215822430.

Primary sources

  1. ↑ Safra, Zvi; Segal, Uzi; Spivak, Avia (1990). "Preference Reversal and Nonexpected Utility Behavior". The American Economic Review. 80 (4): 922–930. ISSN 0002-8282. JSTOR 2006717.
  2. ↑ Karni, Edi; Safra, Zvi (May 1987). ""Preference Reversal" and the Observability of Preferences by Experimental Methods". Econometrica. 55 (3): 675. doi:10.2307/1913606. JSTOR 1913606.
  3. ↑ Hong, Chew Soo; Karni, Edi; Safra, Zvi (August 1987). "Risk aversion in the theory of expected utility with rank dependent probabilities". Journal of Economic Theory. 42 (2): 370–381. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(87)90093-7.
  4. ↑ Karni, Edi; Safra, Zvi (July 1989). "Dynamic Consistency, Revelations in Auctions and the Structure of Preferences". The Review of Economic Studies. 56 (3): 421. doi:10.2307/2297556. JSTOR 2297556.
  5. ↑ Safra, Zvi; Segal, Uzi. Calibration results for non-expected utility theories. Boston College, Dept. of Economics. OCLC 836653937.
  6. ↑ Rubinstein, Ariel; Safra, Zvi; Thomson, William (September 1992). "On the Interpretation of the Nash Bargaining Solution and Its Extension to Non-Expected Utility Preferences". Econometrica. 60 (5): 1171. doi:10.2307/2951543. ISSN 0012-9682. JSTOR 2951543.
  7. ↑ Karni, Edi; Safra, Zvi (January 2002). "Individual Sense of Justice: A Utility Representation". Econometrica. 70 (1): 263–284. doi:10.1111/1468-0262.00275. ISSN 0012-9682.