Elhanan Helpman

Helpman has served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, and served as Co-Editor of the Journal of International Economics and the Quarterly Journal of Economics and as Editor of the European Economic Review. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and was a member of its Council. He delivered major invited lectures, such as the Frank Graham Memorial Lecture at Princeton University, the Schumpeter Lecture of the European Economic Association, of which he is also a fellow, the Walras-Bowley and Frisch Lectures of the Econometric Society and the Ohlin Lectures at the Stockholm School of Economics. He is a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. He was President of the Israeli Economic Association and President of the Econometric Society. He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by the Catholic University of Louvain and the University of Warsaw. From 2004 to 2014 he was director of the Program on Institutions, Organizations and Growth at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). He received the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal, the Bernhard Harms Prize, the Rothschild Prize, the EMET Prize, the Nemmers Prize, the Onassis Prize, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize, and the Israel Prize.

He graduated from Tel Aviv University twice, first with a B.A. in economics and statistics (1969) and then as a member of the first graduating class in the economics M.A. program (1971). Just three years later he completed his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard. Returning immediately to Tel Aviv University, he was a lecturer and later a university professor (1974-2004). In 1997, having already made landmark contributions in three separate areas of economics, he agreed to return to Harvard University.

Elhanan Helpman (Hebrew: אלחנן הלפמן, born March 30, 1946) is an Israeli economist who is currently the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University. He is also a Professor Emeritus at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University. Helpman is among the thirty most cited economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.

Helpman was born in Jalal-Abad, Soviet Union, in 1946 and immigrated with his family to Israel. He had planned to study engineering, but soon changed his mind. Helpman recounts the story of a friend who studied economics, and often carried Samuelson's thick textbook to evening classes. When Helpman casually picked up the book to read, he simply could not stop. It was then he realized he would become an economist. His voracious reading across multiple fields would characterize his approach to knowledge, allowing him to research in many different fields.