Professor Eithan Hochman of the Hebrew University, a graduate of our department at Berkeley, a frequent visitor to Berkeley, and a collaborator and friend of many of us, passed away in Rehovot, Israel, at the age of 95. Eithan was an important part of my life for more than fifty years, and in many ways, he helped determine the path my life and career would take.
Eithan was smart, energetic, adventurous, and full of life. He was always on the move, making friends easily, and looking for adventure. But he was also caring and supporting- of his family, friends and students. When I think about him, I see him traveling on his motorcycle through California, Israel, or Hawaii; discovering a s good restaurant in some godforsaken place; getting into an argument about economics or politics or taking care of his aquariums.
Eithan grew up in a moshav in Israel and lived and loved agriculture. His mother continued to manage the family’s flower-growing operation until she died. He studied agricultural economics at the Hebrew University and was influenced by Pinhas Zusman and Yair Mundlak, great agricultural economists and Berkeley ARE graduates who encouraged Eithan to continue his studies there. Eithan received his Berkeley agricultural economics Ph.D. in 1967. He loved his years here. Throughout his career he returned frequently as a visitor and collaborator. His connection with Berkeley eventually affected not only his own career but mine as well.
Building departments and taking on new challenges
After Berkeley, Eithan returned to Israel and joined the Department of Economics at Tel Aviv University. But staying comfortably in one place was never quite Eithan’s style. After getting tenure at Tel Aviv, he accepted the challenge of building the department of economics at Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva. I loved visiting him in Beer Sheva where I had a sabbatical and enjoyed the hospitality of Eithan and Leah, his wife. I remember walking with Eithan and their dog in the desert, having great dinners with friends, and teaching my son to swim in the local pool. I also enjoyed watching the emergence of a young economics department. Eithan was very persuasive recruiting talented faculty members and raising funds. He helped obtain support for the Monaster Center for economic research, an important part of Ben-Gurion University’s economics research infrastructure.
But eventually another challenge appeared. The Department of Agricultural Economics at the Hebrew University’s Rehovot offered him the opportunity to lead it. Eithan moved again, becoming chair of the department Agricultural Economics in 1990. Once again, he helped a department reinvent and strengthen itself.
I think Rehovot suited him particularly well. There has always been a slight difference in temperament between agricultural economists and mainstream economics. Agricultural economists certainly develop theory and econometric methods, but we are more problem oriented. We talk to farmers, businesses, policymakers, and people operating in the field. We try to understand why they behave as they do and what constraints they actually face. Then we develop theory and empirical methods that help us understand and perhaps solve the problem.
The best agricultural economics is therefore simultaneously rigorous and practical. It also tends to be multidisciplinary because agriculture itself is a biological, environmental, technological, and economic system. That was very much Eithan’s approach. His background on a farm, his enjoyment of people, and his desire to solve real problems all came together in agricultural economics. It was an approach that strongly attracted me as well.
Eithan was an excellent scholar, particularly of dynamic economic systems, agricultural production, natural resources, environmental economics, and technological change. He had a long and important intellectual partnership with Gordon Rausser. Their 1979 book, Dynamic Agricultural Systems: Economic Prediction and Control, became an important contribution to dynamic modeling in agricultural economics and subsequently received the AAEA Publication of Enduring Quality Award.
But what impressed me most was not his technical mastery but his judgement. Eithan had a remarkable instinct for distinguishing between genuinely important problems and become fashionable one who last for several years and then largely disappear. He would listen to an idea and very quickly ask, in effect: Does this really make a difference? If he believed that the answer was yes, he encouraged you to pursue the problem, improve the model, find the data, and see where the idea would lead.
He was interested in theory, but theory for him was a tool for understanding reality rather than an end in itself. He was comfortable moving among economics, agriculture, environmental problems, and biological systems. That combination of rigor, practicality, and intellectual curiosity was one of his greatest strengths.
Eithan made important contributions to agricultural and environmental economics by showing that farms and natural-resource industries cannot be understood through simple, short-term market models. Agriculture is shaped by biological growth, uncertainty, inventories, long-lived investments, changing technologies, and differences among producers.
His work on managing “growing inventories,” such as poultry, fish, crops, and forests showed how decisions about feeding, harvesting, storage, and sale should respond to changing prices and biological conditions. He also emphasized that environmental policies must recognize that farms and firms differ in their costs, technologies, locations, and ability to adjust. A uniform tax or regulation may therefore create unnecessary hardship or fail to achieve its goal. Policies must be not only economically efficient, but also technically workable and politically feasible.
His broader message was that attractive, simple solutions are rarely enough. Markets, corrective taxes, and direct regulations all have useful roles, but none works in every situation. Good policy must consider long-term consequences, encourage innovation, allow gradual adjustment, and change as circumstances change.
Eithan changed my life
My debt to Eithan is enormous. I first worked for him in Israel as a research assistant while I was still a young student. What struck me immediately was the way he treated me.
Some professors give their assistants orders. He listened to my suggestions took them seriously. It gave me confidence and taught me something that I later tried to practice with my own students: good ideas do not necessarily follow academic rank.
Then Eithan changed my life in an even more direct way. Through Alain de Janvry, he learned about opportunities for graduate study at Berkeley and encouraged Gershon Feder and me to apply to the Department of Agricultural Economics. I followed his advice and never regretted it.
When I arrived at Berkeley, remarkably, Eithan was there as a visitor. We began working together again. Our work on agricultural pollution and farm behavior required going into the field, talking to farmers, understanding heterogeneity among farms and technologies, and then translating what we learned into economic models. Several publications emerged from this work and helped launch my academic career.
Later, working with Eithan and Richard Just, I learned another important lesson: persistence. Research does not proceed smoothly. Papers are rejected, reviewers sometimes misunderstand what you are trying to do, and ideas that appear simple initially can become difficult. Eithan taught me to keep going—to listen to useful criticism, disregard what was not useful, improve the work, and try again.
But perhaps just as importantly, Eithan showed me that research could be fun.
Scholarship did not have to mean sitting solemnly in an office. We could discuss a model, travel, visit farms, argue about economics, eat a good meal, and then return to the model. There did not have to be a sharp boundary between intellectual life and life itself.
Over time, my relationship with Eithan went far beyond that of professor and former research assistant. I became part of his life and, to some extent, part of his family.
His wife, Leah, was an important part of that relationship. When I first came to Berkeley, Leah became my driving instructor, and I am still grateful that she tolerated the experience. Years later, when I was on sabbatical in Israel, Eithan and Leah opened their home and their lives to us. Those relationships have continued across generations. Eithan’s son Gal became an excellent economist in his own right and is now Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Gal is also one of my closest collaborators and friends. We have worked together on many topics, including energy, environmental policy, biotechnology, and the bioeconomy.
A life of curiosity
Of course, remembering Eithan only as an economist would miss a large part of the man. He loved movement. He loved motorcycles. He traveled on them in Israel and throughout the United States. He rode in California and Hawaii, and motorcycles became part of the image many of us had of him: Eithan moving down another road toward somewhere he had not yet explored.
One of my happiest memories is visiting him when he was on sabbatical at the University of Hawaii. His work there included research on drip irrigation in sugarcane and on shrimp harvesting, a combination that was quite appropriate for someone whose curiosity crossed conventional disciplinary boundaries.
Eithan has strong views, which he never hid. He cared deeply about Israel, agriculture, and the natural world. He has been distraught by the enhanced role of messianic approaches in Israel, believed strongly believed in secular democracy collaboration among people and in peace.
Wherever Eithan went, he somehow discovered the interesting people, the unusual places, and the new adventures. That is why my conversation with him about a year ago remains so vivid. By then, life had become physically very difficult for him. He was suffering. Yet he told me, “Despite the suffering, I want to continue to live.”.
And I see a man who, even at the end of a long and difficult life, remained curious about what tomorrow might bring.
That was Eithan.
I am enormously grateful that he was part of my life, and I will miss him very much.
An announcement (in Hebrew) about his funeral and the shiva at his house 225 Zeelon street in Gallia Village is below.
