JERUSALEM, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday named Israeli-American finance professor Amir Yaron as the new governor of Bank of Israel.
Netanyahu announced the nomination at a joint press conference with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon in Jerusalem.
"We want to ensure that the governor will be a person with great ability and top professional capabilities," Netanyahu said, while calling Yaron as "the most suitable candidate" for the post.
Yaron, 54, will replace Karnit Flug, who has served in office for five years.
Born in Israel, Yaron spent the last 20 years living in the U.S. He is now a finance professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a research fellow at the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests include asset pricing, macro-finance and applied time series economics.
Yaron holds a bachelor's and master's degree in economics from Tel Aviv University and an additional master's degree in economics from the University of Chicago, where he also completed his doctorate in 1994.
During her term, Flug had several confrontations with Kahlon, mainly over her demand to raise taxes and opposition to the cheap housing program that Kahlon founded.
