ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: Who were the Amei Haaretz, and what did the Talmud say about them?

Maristella Botticini is professor of economics, as well as director and fellow of the Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research at Università Bocconi in Milan, Italy. She earned her Laurea degree in Economics at Università Bocconi in 1990 and her PhD in Economics at Northwestern University in the United States in 1997.

She started her career in 1997 as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics of Boston University, where she was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2004. From 2006 to 2009 she was fellow of the Collegio Carlo Alberto and professor of economics at the Università degli Studi di Torino.

She is the recipient of a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation, an Alfred P. Sloan research fellowship, and an Advanced ERC research grant from the European Research Council.

She is also a research fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), as well as fellow and council member of the European Economic Association.

Her research interests include Jewish economic history, marriage markets in comparative perspective, and the empirical analysis of contracts. In 2012 Princeton University Press published The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70 – 1492, which she wrote with Israeli economist Zvi Eckstein. In 2012 it was granted the Nahum Sarna Memorial Award for “scholarship” by the Jewish Book Council, as one of the Council’s National Jewish Book Awards. It was also listed as one of the 40 Best Jewish Books of 2012 by Jewish Ideas Daily.com, and has been translated into many languages, including Vietnamese, Polish and Chinese.

Dr. Botticini spoke with us about the book and the importance of education throughout Jewish history.