HOROWITZ, DAVID

HOROWITZ, DAVID (1899–1979), Israel economist. Born in Drohobycz (then Austrian Galicia), Horowitz was active in *Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir and settled in Palestine in 1920. He was a member of kibbutz *Bet Alfa until 1925, serving as a member of the executive committee of the *Histadrut between 1922 and 1925. From 1925 to 1927 he was a member and secretary-general of *Gedud ha-Avodah. He worked as a journalist until 1932, when he was appointed financial adviser to the American Economic Committee in Palestine. Between 1935 and 1948, Horowitz was director of the Economic Department of the *Jewish Agency, while also lecturing at the Tel Aviv School of Law and Economics. He was in charge of organizing the evidence for the yishuv representatives to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and was a liaison officer to the 1947 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (unscop), which recommended the partition of the country. He was also a member of the Jewish Agency delegation to the UN General Assembly, which accepted the Partition Plan (Nov. 29, 1947). Between 1948 and 1952, Horowitz was director general of the Ministry of Finance and dealt with the financing of the *War of Independence. From 1952 he worked to establish the Bank of Israel, becoming its first governor (nagid) in 1954. In public life Horowitz sometimes displayed a critical attitude toward the economic policies of the government. He was appointed the governor representing Israel at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Finance Corporation, and the International Development Association. A program for the encouragement of capital investment in developing countries – "The Horowitz Proposal," which he presented to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 1964 – considerably influenced the decisions taken by this body and by various other international institutions. In 1968 Horowitz was elected council member representing Asia in the Society for International Development. He was awarded the 1968 Israel Prize for social sciences.

Horowitz retired from his position as governor of the Bank of Israel on October 31, 1971, and was succeeded by Moshe Sanbar (Sandberg).

His main works include The Abolition of Poverty (1969), Economics of Israel (1967), Hemisphere, North and South: Economic Disparity Among Nations (1966), State in the Making (1953), Halakhah Kalkalit u-Mediniyyut Kalkalit be-Yisrael (1958), Mivneh u-Megammah be-Khalkalat Yisrael (1964), Ẓel ha-Etmol ve-Etgar ha-Maḥar (1962), Ha-Kimmum u-Va'ayotav ba-Olam u-ve-Ereẓ Yisrael (1945), and Ha-Kalkalah ha-Ereẓ Yisre'elit be-Hitpattehutah (1948²). His autobiographical volume Ha-Etmol Shelli (1970) describes the ideological struggle in the Palestine Labor and colonization movement in the late 1920s.

[Yitzhak Julius Taub]