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The purpose of this paper is to extract the optimal time allocation of weekly hours among work, sleep, sports, and internet use for 16 different demographic groups.

The agent wishes to minimize the gap between his or her actual and optimal allocation for each activity. His or her actual allocation of time for each activity is affected by his or her allocations for other activities and by exogenous variables. A system of simultaneous equations is constructed, with the four levels of time allocation as the endogenous variables. Using a cross-section database of 928 Israel residents, the authors estimate the system and predict the actual allocation of time. Inserting the forecast equations into the agents’ target function and differentiating by each actual time allocation, the authors extract the optimal time allocation for 16 different demographic groups.

The results make it clear that the optimal desired level of sleep hours is highest among married Jews and non-Jews of both genders, whereas the desired level of work hours is highest among female non-Jews whose children have a computer and among married males, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Female Jews and non-Jews wish to allocate the most hours to internet use, while married males of both nationalities wish to allocate the fewest. The desired level of sports hours is highest among married and non-married Jews. Examining the effect of age on time allocation, the main findings show a very significant cutback in allocation of hours for sleep among agents at age 20.8 and an increase of about 2.5 hours of sleep among agents aged 60.8, both relative to those aged 40.8.

The original model presented here brings a non-traditional approach to the analysis of time allocation. The authors believe that each agent wishes that he or she could allocate his or her time for personal benefit on the basis of a theoretical apportionment determined on the basis of experience and tendencies. Even though an agent’s actual time allocation may be affected by many factors, he or she still has a sense of disutility when the actual allocation deviates from selected optimum.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the relative effect of relevant explanatory variable on smoking tendency and smoking intensity.

Using survey data collected by the Israeli Bureau of Statistics in 2003‐2004, a probit procedure is estimated for analyzing factors that affect the probability of being a smoker. Using ordinary least square methods, the factors that affect smoking intensity are also estimated.

The findings show that the probability of being a smoker, as well as having greater intensity of smoking, is larger for males, non‐Jews, and those who are un‐married and younger. When estimating different equations for males and females, the results for males are in the same direction as the results for all sample observations, but for females it is found that being Jewish significantly increases smoking probability and females born in America or Europe smoke more intensively.

Our findings enable the focusing of the relevant authorities' attention on the population that is at a higher risk of smoking.

Concurrent with the necessary legislation, a strategy has to be developed that can appropriately target the different educational, ethnic, age and gender groups, and effectively communicate the correct health message that will properly impact on long‐term behavior.

The findings contribute to existing knowledge in two main aspects: the first is in measuring the relative effect of each significant explanatory variable on smoking tendency and smoking intensity. The second is in using a unique data set that includes many agents' characteristics and examining the significance of the various characteristics on smoking tendency and smoking intensity.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a theoretical framework for analyzing the connection between economic growth, demand for medical care, and economic health.

The economy is composed of two sectors, one of medical care goods and the other of consumption goods. Equilibrium is defined when capital per‐capita in period t is equal to that of period t+1.

An equilibrium path is found for the demand for consumption and for medical care goods, per‐capita level of health, capital, savings, trade balance, and net foreign assets.

The importance of the paper is in its ability to analyze the change in public health along the growth path of the economy.

An example and a simulation are presented in order to confirm the theoretical results and demonstrate that the model can be used for empirical analysis.

The paper constructs a connection between economic growth and health sector economic developments.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the social loss occurring due to the inability of the government to use the real public demand function.

The authors developed a model that enables maximization of the public utility of a given public budget by maximizing total consumer surplus, and presented a method for calculating the social loss due to the inability to use the real public demand function.

The social loss occurring due to the inability of the government to use the real public demand curve was shown.

In reality, it is impossible to get the proper evaluation of social utility function. Instead, the authors assumed a given public demand for each public good.

The paper presents a way to measure overtime social loss as a function of the sum of overtime government expenses, the coefficient of variation of the public good supply and the elasticity of demand of the average demand curve.

Improving the allocation of public budget.

Given the demand curve for each public good, this paper presents a technique for the optimal allocation of a given budget in order to maximize aggregate consumer surplus.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the centralization of control in the Israeli economy.

The paper uses data published by the Israeli stock market authority to identify owners holding more then 5 percent of a company's value.

The total worth of stocks traded in the Tel‐Aviv stock exchange was 690 billion shekels (about 180 billion current US dollars), while the worth of the 25 largest companies was about 479 billion shekels (69.4 percent). The party of interest holdings share in these companies was 35.2 percent (while the public share was 64.8 percent).

In order to reach economic efficiency, we are willing to pay the social cost of unequal income distribution. There is no reason not to use the same logic regarding the taxing of inheritance. If it is more economically efficient, inheritance should be taxed, although it has already been taxed in the past.

How can we improve income distribution without levying taxes that reduce economic efficiency? The answer is high taxes on inheritance.

The paper suggests a practical policy to reduce inequality in Israel.

The main aim of this paper is to examine the effect of economic growth on worker mobility and the effect of this mobility on income distribution.

The paper develops an overlapping generation model with multiple categories of labor. In order to confirm the theoretical results and demonstrate that the model can be used for empirical analysis, an example and a simulation were presented.

The analysis demonstrates that, as capital stock increase, workers are mobilized up to better jobs, their income grows and income distribution becomes more equalized.

Endogenous technological improvement and population growth might also be added to the discussion, but at the price of a more complicated model. Discussion on these issues showed be left for future research.

The effect of tax policy can be easily added to the model and to the discussion.

This paper extended the overlapping generation model to include different types of individuals. The importance of the paper is in its ability to analyze the changes in the income of various categories of workers along the growth path of the economy.

This paper aims to propose a tax reform that would reduce income taxes and other indirect taxes while at the same time increasing inheritance and estate taxes. Such a reform is economically very efficient and would certainly equalize income distribution.

A wide review of the death and inheritance taxes in the USA and Europe is presented.

Government's revenue from inheritance and gifts is lower than 1 percent of GDP. This is due mainly to a combination of considerable tax‐free allowances for the closest relatives and high thresholds where the top rates apply. No empirical examination of the effect of inheritance tax on economic growth or economic efficiency could be found.

Because inheritance taxes are economically efficient, they improve the immoral unequal income distribution drastically. Therefore, it should be concluded that inheritance tax must be implemented.

This paper discusses the various economic aspects of the proposed tax reform.

The purpose of this paper is to rank the factors associated with smoking according to their relative effect on the tendency to smoke.

A probit procedure and ordinary least squares methods are used to analyze factors that affect the probability of being a smoker and factors that affect smoking intensity, as measured by the number of cigarettes smoked per day.

The paper finds that a relative risk (RR) of smoking is highest for Arab males, especially those with only 11‐12 years of schooling, married with more than five children or unmarried, while it is lowest for Arab females, especially those married with two to four children, or less than eight years of schooling.

The findings indicate that certain characteristics are associated with much larger RR. Mainly, it is found that the RR of smoking is highest for Arab males who work 1‐20 weekly hours, have 11‐12 years of schooling, with more than five children or are unmarried, while it is lowest for married Arab females with two to four children, with less than eight years of schooling, who work 21‐30 hours a week.

It is difficult to get an adequate account of human needs but there are known needs which, for hundreds of millions of people, are not met. Can the present economic system meet them? Can any economic system meet them? Is simple economic growth the answer? The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the questions, emphasizing the problems and paradoxes.

The paper looks at India where poverty is rampant despite recent gains, and at Bhutan which ranks low in economic production but quite high on the “happiness scales”. It also looks at questions of the relation of economic inequality to social problems, citing recent studies.

The paper focuses on how well the world's economic systems address, or fail to address, human needs.

This paper is written by a philosopher and writer on social economics (and Editor of International Journal of Social Economics (IJSE )) who works in a variety of fields: metaphysics and its epistemological relations, the theory of the history of philosophy (focusing on the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries), and moral, social, and economic philosophy and their relations to culture and religion. The paper then introduces the papers in this special issue of the IJSE devoted to human needs.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the significance of the incidence of female principals in the urban sector of Eretz Israel, against the background of growing Jewish society, through the prism of which we can view the development of modern Hebrew education during the waning Ottoman rule.

In addition to the archival material, contemporary newspapers provided an important source, as did memoirs of prominent people that, to some extent, filled in the “gaps”, more on the running of the schools and less on the activities of the four principals.

A survey of the archival material reveals that the four women share biographical elements, their talents, personalities and education obtained abroad, style of school leadership and organization, not to mention their moral contribution to the education of girls in Eretz Israel.

One may point to other fields in which women began to play a more prominent role, based on European training and experience. For instance, in medicine and a modern approach to midwifery, From 1900, modern trained female doctors, nurses and midwives began to be employed in hospitals and private practices around the country, helping to radically reduce childbirth fatalities and allowing women to consult a woman practitioner where before they had been unwilling to expose themselves to men. Although a direct link between the earlier presence of female educational administrators and the entry of women doctors may be difficult to establish, the atmosphere had certainly begun to change.

From that period on, during the British Mandate, and after the creation of the State of Israel, immense changes have been instituted. One can view the seeds of these changes as, at least in part, having been planted by the pioneering work of our four women. There were far reaching developments in the conception of female management from the time of the Ottoman rule through the period of the British Mandate.

This research shines a light on a forgotten world and pursues a phenomenon not yet revealed in Zionist historiography − the running of girls’ schools by women in the Jewish community, under the dying Ottoman regime. The study allows us a deeper insight into the historical educational processes that fashioned the profession of head teachers, via pioneering female principals. Female administration in a patriarchal society, with a hegemonic male orientation that placed man at the centre and woman as secondary, faced these problems, obstacles and opposition. Women who were appointed to run schools had to justify their position by imitating the “masculine” style of management and to carry out their work − both pedagogical and administrative − without organizational, social or emotional support. They suffered opposition, internal (their male teaching staff) and external (from patrons and the religious community) and the need to respond to their criticism.