Noa Yehezkel
Koret-Milken Institute Fellow 2006-07 and 2007-08
 

Noa Yehezkel, a Koret-Milken Institute alumna, chose the topic "Must Getting Older Condemn Israelis to Unemployment?" for her first yearlong policy study. The paper is a groundbreaking assessment of Israeli laws and economic policies that prevent individuals over age 65 from obtaining employment. If implemented, her recommendations for reform, which are based on international comparisons, would make life easier for tens of thousands of Israelis. But the title is what best expresses Noa’s approach to the issue: neither dry nor academic, it expresses her dismay at economic folly and personal degradation.

 

The fellowship program, provides annual fellowships to exemplary students to complete independent economic research on issues impeding business development, employment expansion and economic growth in Israel.

During the first year of her fellowship, Noa was posted in the office of MK Eliahu Gabai, a member of the Knesset’s Economics Committee. She researched such topics as the implications of a negative income tax; the bureaucratic and budgetary savings that would result if small villages merged with cities; and the transportation infrastructure necessary to rebuild Israel’s northern region. MK Gabai turned her data and analyses into policy initiatives, and her op-eds - for example, "The Importance of Small Businesses to the Economy" and "Issuing Municipal Bonds Instead of Pouring Money Down the Municipal Drain" - were published in Israeli dailies and Internet news sites.

In addition to researching her policy paper on employment for the elderly, Noa was part of a team of fellows researching municipal bonds and innovative means of financing regional projects. She took an active role in the development of a bond bank for northern Israel that will seek to fund regional and municipal industrial, environment, transportation and tourism projects. Her enthusiasm and the data she gathered led to her being attached to a team of Milken Institute researchers headed by Professor Glenn Yago, and including members of Israel’s ministries of industry and finance, and the Bank of Israel, which is seeking to encourage financial innovations.

Koret-Milken Institute Fellowship Program directors had no trouble awarding Noa a second-year fellowship, during which Noa researched the state of alternative energy and renewable energy in Israel. Upon graduating from the fellows program, Noa started working at the ministry of finance.

Noa received a bachelor’s degree with honors in business and economics at Haifa University in 2006 and begins her MBA this year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During her upcoming fellowship, she will be posted to the Finance Ministry, where she expects to work on municipal bond issues. "I want to be given a lot of work," she said before accepting the second-year fellowship, "and expect to work hard."