Did you know that the average worker in Israel now makes more money than the average worker in the European Union? And that the average Israeli company grows nearly twice as fast as the average British company? None of this was remotely true 25 years ago. What changed? This course will try to teach something timeless about the principles of political economy by addressing a fundamental question: what makes economies grow? It will do so by using weekly case studies taken from Israeli business and government to look at the factors that have made Israel’s economy take off since the 1990s, accomplishing the most impressive growth spurt seen in the entire Western world over the past quarter century. The cases will cover subjects in the news today, like technology innovation, venture capital, the military, and the state’s economic policy during crises. But most of all, it will use these cases to try to look at the bigger economic picture.