First published in 1998, this study offers a survey of the conceptual background, the political dimension, and the macroeconomic context and constraints of the social security system in Israel, which in four decades (since the mid-1950s) grew virtually from scratch into a comprehensive system, similar in scope to that of Western and Northern Europe, North America, the European outposts in the antipodes and, of course, Japan.

First published in 1998, this study offers a survey of the conceptual background, the political dimension, and the macroeconomic context and constraints of the social security system in Israel, which in four decades (since the mid-1950s) grew virtually from scratch into a comprehensive system, similar in scope to that of Western and Northern Europe, North America, the European outposts in the antipodes and, of course, Japan.

This work, integrating monetary and value theory in a Walrasian general equilibrium context, anticipated by almost two decades the line of research which attempts to recast macroeconomics by reference to its microeconomic foundations. The notion of an integrated set of markets offered intuitive perception of intermarket linkages. At the same time it highlighted some of the pitfalls of traditional neoclassical monetary analysis, such as the erroneous imputation of unitary elasticity to the demand curve for money.;Patinkin's presentation of general equilibrium illuminated the difficulty in upholding the Keynesian notion of underemployment equilibrium. His insightful efforts to understand behaviour in labour markets in disequilibrium led him to provide the first well worked out example of the powerful implications of disequilibrium and thereby to lay the foundations for the disequilibrium analysis of the 1970s.

Volume II provides an in-depth analysis of important specific issues, detailed discussion of the independence of the Bank of Israel, and an econometric study of the central banks policies. This volume also includes a historical account of the liberalization of Israel's foreign-exchange market and various issues related to the banking system, such as concentration, competition, and especially banking supervision. In one of the articles in this volume, based on a series of interviews, the top officials of the Bank of Israel present their view on the Banks policies in the various periods.

These two volumes were written on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Bank of Israel. They recount the monetary history of Israel from 1948, when the country was established (and before) to the present day. Volume I retells Israel's monetary history, analyzes the background of the developments mentioned above, and describes the difficulties in regaining monetary control in recent years. This volume also provides an analytical framework to help understand the monetary developments in the inflationary era and in the disinflation process.

This analysis of Israel's successful stabilisation programme challenges current thinking on macroeconomic policy. It reviews and examines the take-off of runaway inflation and of the subsequent stabilisation policy in what can be seen as laboratory conditions. Since Israel's stabilisation policy is one of only two which have actually succeeded, it offers important lessons to all East European and many Latin American countries in the design and implementation of these programmes. Professional economists concerned with macroeconomics, money, credit and banking, monetary and banking theory, economic policy, and inflation and stabilisation, as well as Latin American and East European scholars, should find this work extremely informative.