Biography:Ariel Rubinstein

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Ariel Rubinstein
אריאל רובינשטיין
Born (1951-04-13) April 13, 1951 (age 75)
Jerusalem, Israel
Alma materHebrew University (PhD, 1979)
OccupationEconomist
EmployerTel Aviv University
Known forEconomic Theory

Ariel Rubinstein (Hebrew: אריאל רובינשטיין; born April 13, 1951) is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Tel Aviv University and a Professor of Economics at New York University. His primary research focuses on economic theory, specifically game theory, bounded rationality, choice theory, economics and language, and experimental economics.

Rubinstein is a recipient of the Israel Prize (2002), a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy.

Politically, Rubinstein holds a left-wing Zionist worldview, which he frequently expresses in his publicistic writing.

Biography

Rubinstein was born in 1951 in the Tel Arza neighborhood of Jerusalem. His parents, Leah and Yehuda, immigrated to Israel from Białystok in the 1930s. His sister was the musician Bat-Sheva Rubinstein.

He attended the Sokolov and Beit HaYeled schools and later graduated from the Hebrew University Secondary School. He served as an officer in the Artillery Corps. In 1971, he began his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, completing a B.A. in Mathematics, Economics, and Statistics (1974). He earned an M.A. in Economics (1975) under Menahem Yaari and an M.Sc. in Mathematics (1976) under Bezalel Peleg. In 1979, he was awarded a PhD in Economics, also supervised by Menahem Yaari.

After postdoctoral fellowships at Nuffield College and Bell Labs, he joined the faculty of the Hebrew University in 1981, becoming a full professor in 1985. In 1990, he moved to the School of Economics at Tel Aviv University, where he became Professor Emeritus in 2019. Concurrently, he held partial appointments at Princeton University (1990–2003) and New York University (since 2003).

His major honors include the Israel Prize in Economics (2002), the Nemmers Prize in Economics (2004), the EMET Prize (2006), and serving as the President of the Econometric Society (2004).

He was a co-founder of the "Movement for Another Zionism" and one of the initiators of the "Officers' Letter" (1978) and Peace Now. He was married to Yael Rubinstein, a former Israeli ambassador, and has two children, Michal and Yuval.

Academic Work

Rubinstein views models of economic theory as fables and believes they should be evaluated as such.[1] He is skeptical of using economic theory as a definitive basis for predictions or policy recommendations. He argues that while theory can clarify thinking, its principles are not necessarily prescriptions for reality:

"Economics studies can, at most, encourage systematic thinking about social and economic problems, but they cannot provide solutions... there are no professionals with solutions to society's current problems, but there are plenty of charlatans waiting for the call."

He believes that one should not rush to apply economic theory to the moral decisions of everyday life:

"The rapid and assertive leap from abstract discussion to concrete problems is the greatest danger in using concepts derived from the academic ivory tower. When dealing with political issues, it is doubtful whether an appeal to academic theory is superior to the wisdom of the 'man on the street'."

Rubinstein has made contributions to a vast number of fields in economic theory, as follows:

Game Theory

  • Bargaining Theory: Rubinstein's most famous paper[2] presents a strategic model of bargaining, which serves as a development of the work of Nobel Laureate John Forbes Nash Jr.. The relationship between Rubinstein's model and the Nash bargaining model was analyzed in two subsequent papers[3][4].
  • Repeated Games: Alongside Nobel Laureates Robert Aumann and Lloyd Shapley, Rubinstein analyzed perfect equilibrium in repeated game models with players using "limit of means" or "overtaking" criteria, proving what is known as the Perfect Folk Theorem[5].
  • The Email Game: His paper demonstrates that a game with incomplete information, where players have "almost common knowledge," can differ significantly from a game with actual Common Knowledge (CK). This paradoxical idea has been utilized in game theory as a method for equilibrium selection in an approach called Global Games[6].

Bounded Rationality

Rubinstein was among the first to build economic models where participants engage in decision procedures that are inconsistent with the "Rational Agent" model. His primary contributions in this field include:

  • Repeated Games with Finite Automata: His paper[7] was a pioneer in analyzing repeated games where players do not only seek to maximize utility but also strive to minimize the complexity of the strategies they employ.
  • Choice Procedures: An example of his work on choice procedures is his study of decision-making under uncertainty using the concept of similarity[8].
  • Mechanism Design: Together with Jacob Glazer, Rubinstein built unique models where a designer attempts to achieve a desired outcome by exploiting the cognitive limitations of the players[9][10].
  • Imperfect Memory: In a paper with Michele Piccione, the two conceived the Absent Driver Paradox[11]: A driver traveling a road with two exits wishes to exit at the second one, but knows that upon reaching an intersection, he will not remember whether he is at the first or second exit. The analysis demonstrates the paradoxical nature of decision-making with imperfect memory.
  • Equilibrium with Sampling: Alongside Martin Osborne, they introduced a game-theoretic solution based on the assumption that players sample each of their available strategies and choose the one that performed best in the sample. This new equilibrium exhibits properties (such as the use of dominated strategies) that are not possible in conventional game theory[12].

Market Models

  • Bargaining and Markets: Together with Asher Wolinsky, Rubinstein built market models where buyers and sellers meet randomly and bargain under the shadow of the ability to return and bargain with others. The outcome of this process differs fundamentally from the predictions of competitive equilibrium[13].
  • Jungle Economics: In a work with Michele Piccione, the two presented a model where the outcome of economic interaction results from the power dynamics between players[14].
  • Economics Without Prices and Without Games: In recent years, Rubinstein has focused on building market models outside the frameworks of competitive equilibrium or game theory. These works, mostly done with Michael Richter, were summarized in their book No Prices, No Games! (Four Economic Models)[15].

Experimental Economics

His experimental work began with a collaboration with Amos Tversky on the Hide and Seek Game[16] and continued through a didactic website he established in 2002[17]. Rubinstein was a pioneer in emphasizing the importance of measuring response time to interpret participant behavior in economic experiments[18][19].

Other Topics

  • Economics and Language: Rubinstein emphasized the value of adding linguistic elements to economic models, summarized in his book Economics and Language[20].
  • Social Choice Theory: How individual preferences can be unified into a single group decision[21][22][23].
  • Economics and Law: Rubinstein wrote his doctoral dissertation in this field. For example, he analyzed optimal punishment in cases where an individual faces a sequential choice problem and may cause a negative outcome inadvertently[24].

Social and Political Activity

Rubinstein is a prominent voice on social justice[25]. For over a decade, he led a group of faculty at Tel Aviv University that successfully campaigned for the rights and improved conditions of contract workers[26].

A long-time peace activist, he has been vocal against the settlement enterprise in the West Bank. In 2002, he expressed support for conscientious objectors, calling them "the Guardians of the Walls of the Jewish conscience."[27] In 2015, he published an article explaining why the Holocaust Remembrance Day has to be canceled[28]; in 2025, he published an article titled "Why I Will Not Stand Still on Holocaust Remembrance Day," critiquing the nationalistic uses of the day[29].

In the summer of 2025, he organized a petition among Israeli academics calling for an end to the "starvation policy and the destruction of Gaza cities," urging others not to cooperate with such policies.

In matters of social justice, for about a decade he headed a group of lecturers at Tel Aviv University who addressed the problem of unfair employment of contract workers and achieved improvements in their employment conditions. Rubinstein expressed social-democratic views, for example in his criticism of the employment conditions of contract workers[30], the problem of wealth[31], and against the special status of economics professors in public discourse[32].

The "Atlas of Cafes Where One Can Think"

Rubinstein maintains a unique project called the Atlas of Cafes Where One Can Think[33][34][35]. This online map features approximately 750 cafes worldwide where he believes the environment is conducive to thinking (regardless of the quality of the coffee). Since 2006, he has collaborated with typographer Yanek Iontef to produce posters featuring photographs of these cafes, distributed for free[36][37].

Publications

Ariel Rubinstein has published about 110 articles and eight books (all of his books are freely downloadable from his homepage[38]):

  • Bargaining and Markets, with M. Osborne, Academic Press, 1990.
  • A Course in Game Theory, with M. Osborne, MIT Press, 1994.
  • Modeling Bounded Rationality, MIT Press, 1998.
  • Economics and Language, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  • Lecture Notes in Microeconomic Theory: The Economic Agent, Princeton University Press, 2005.
  • Economic Fables, OpenBook Publishers, 2012.
  • Models of Microeconomic Theory, with M. Osborne, Open Book Publishers, 2020.
  • No Prices No Games, with M. Richter, Open Book Publishers, 2024.

See also

  • List of Israel Prize recipients

References

  1. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, Economic Fables, Open Book Publishers, 2012-04-20. ISBN 978-1-906924-77-5.
  2. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model", Econometrica, Vol. 50 (1982), pp. 97–109. doi:10.2307/1912531.
  3. ↑ Ken Binmore, Ariel Rubinstein, and Asher Wolinsky, "The Nash Bargaining Solution in Economic Modelling", The RAND Journal of Economics, Vol. 17 (1986), p. 176. doi:10.2307/2555382.
  4. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, Zvi Safra, and William Thomson, "On the Interpretation of the Nash Bargaining Solution and Its Extension to Non-Expected Utility Preferences", Econometrica, Vol. 60 (1992), pp. 1171–1186. doi:10.2307/2951543.
  5. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "Equilibrium in supergames with the overtaking criterion", Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 21 (1979), pp. 1–9. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(79)90002-4.
  6. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "The Electronic Mail Game: Strategic Behavior Under 'Almost Common Knowledge'", The American Economic Review, Vol. 79 (1989), pp. 385–391.
  7. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "Finite automata play the repeated prisoner's dilemma", Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 39 (1986), pp. 83–96. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(86)90021-9.
  8. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "Similarity and decision-making under risk (is there a utility theory resolution to the Allais paradox?)", Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 46 (1988), pp. 145–153. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(88)90154-8.
  9. ↑ Jacob Glazer and Ariel Rubinstein, "A Model of Persuasion with Boundedly Rational Agents", Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 120 (2012).
  10. ↑ Jacob Glazer and Ariel Rubinstein, "Magical Implementation", working paper available at arielrubinstein.org.
  11. ↑ Michele Piccione and Ariel Rubinstein, "On the Interpretation of Decision Problems with Imperfect Recall", Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. 20 (1997), pp. 3–24. doi:10.1006/game.1997.0536.
  12. ↑ Martin J. Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein, "Games with Procedurally Rational Players", The American Economic Review, Vol. 88 (1998), pp. 834–847.
  13. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein and Asher Wolinsky, "Equilibrium in a Market with Sequential Bargaining", Econometrica, Vol. 53 (1985), pp. 1133–1150. doi:10.2307/1911015.
  14. ↑ Michele Piccione and Ariel Rubinstein, "Equilibrium in the Jungle", The Economic Journal, Vol. 117 (2007), pp. 883–896. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02072.x.
  15. ↑ Michael Richter and Ariel Rubinstein, No Prices No Games!: Four Economic Models, Open Book Publishers, 2024. ISBN 978-1-80511-308-9.
  16. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, Amos Tversky, and Dana Heller, "Naive Strategies in Competitive Games", in Understanding Strategic Interaction, Springer, 1997, pp. 394–402. ISBN 978-3-642-60495-9.
  17. ↑ "Games-and-Behavior: Experimental Game Theory", arielrubinstein.org, retrieved February 14, 2026.
  18. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "Instinctive and Cognitive Reasoning: A Study of Response Times", The Economic Journal, Vol. 117 (2007), pp. 1243–1259. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02081.x.
  19. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "A Typology of Players: Between Instinctive and Contemplative", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 131 (2016), pp. 859–890. doi:10.1093/qje/qjw008.
  20. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, Economics and Language, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  21. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "The Single Profile Analogues to Multi Profile Theorems: Mathematical Logic's Approach", International Economic Review, Vol. 25 (1984), pp. 719–730. doi:10.2307/2526229.
  22. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein and Peter C. Fishburn, "Algebraic aggregation theory", Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 38 (1986), pp. 63–77. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(86)90088-8.
  23. ↑ Jocelyne Couture, "Logical analysis and analyticity; from Carnap to Gödel", Dialectica, Vol. 51 (1997), pp. 95–117. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.1997.tb00023.x.
  24. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "An Optimal Conviction Policy for Offenses that May Have Been Committed by Accident", in Applied Game Theory, Physica-Verlag, 1979, pp. 406–413. ISBN 978-3-7908-0208-5.
  25. ↑ "List of semi-academic and non-academic articles" on Ariel Rubinstein's website.
  26. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "Ten notes on the 'transparent' people present", Bashaar - Academic Community for Israeli Society.
  27. ↑ "Democracy, Obedience and Refusal", Ometz LeSarev (Courage to Refuse), May 19, 2002.
  28. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "Holocaust Remembrance Day should be canceled", Haaretz, April 15, 2015.
  29. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "The siren was ashamed – Why I will not stand still this year on Holocaust Remembrance Day", Haaretz, April 22, 2025.
  30. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "Tatiana's holiday pan", Yedioth Ahronoth, April 13, 2005.
  31. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "On the problem of wealth", Haaretz, December 23, 2023.
  32. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "How game theory will solve the Eurozone problems and stop the Iranian nuclear program", Haaretz, April 19, 2013.
  33. ↑ "Ariel Rubinstein's Atlas of Cafes where one can think", cafeatlas.org.
  34. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "A quarter coffee, three quarters water", Yedioth Ahronoth, March 16, 2009.
  35. ↑ Ariel Rubinstein, "The Beer Sheva Experiment", 2015.
  36. ↑ "Request for Ariel Rubinstein's 2025 Cafe poster", cafeatlas.org.
  37. ↑ "Coffee places where you can think", cafeatlas.org, updated 2025.
  38. ↑ "Personal homepage of Ariel Rubinstein", arielrubinstein.org.




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