About

Efraim Benmelech is the Henry Bullock Professor of Finance & Real Estate at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He serves as a Co-Director of the Guthrie Center for Real Estate Research and is the Director of the Crown Family Israel Center for Innovation. Additionally, he is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research interests are centered on credit markets, including the bond market, financial crises, securitization, bankruptcy, and financial distress. He also writes extensively on the economics of national security, terrorism, and economic history. Professor Benmelech's work has received wide media coverage in outlets such as Bloomberg, the Boston Globe, The Economist, the Financial Times, Fortune, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, obtained in 2005, and has held various academic and professional positions, including Director of Real Estate at Kellogg and roles in the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Ministry of Finance.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Economics
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Labour economics
• Macroeconomics
• Psychology
• Finance
• Geography
• Economic growth
• Law
• Business
• Development economics
• Management
• Library science
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• War and Democratic Backsliding

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-01-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We provide the first global, long-run evidence on how war reshapes democratic institutions.Using data on all conflicts since 1948, we show that the onset of conflict causes a large and persistent decline in democracy: institutions weaken immediately, continue to erode for nearly a decade, and do not recover.Yet this deterioration is highly selective.It appears only in first-time conflicts, intrastate wars, highly fractionalized societies, and conflicts that governments win.The decline operates through political channels -media censorship, judicial purges, curtailed civil liberties, irregular leadership turnover, and constitutional suspensions -rather than through any functional requirement of war-making.Autocratization does not increase the probability of victory, and institutional instability reduces it.Taken together, the findings show that war does not require autocracy; it enables executives to expand their authority and implement institutional changes that would be difficult to enact in peacetime.

  PublisherDOI

• War and Democratic Backsliding

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Offensive Counter-Terrorism: Lessons from Israel

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-03-08

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Debt and Assets

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Economic Consequences of War

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-10-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper provides systematic evidence on the macroeconomic consequences of war using a new dataset covering 115 conflicts and 145 countries over the past 75 years.We document three main findings.First, conflict generates large and persistent real effects: real GDP falls by 13% on average with no recovery even after a decade, while investment collapses as financial frictions reduce domestic credit.The drop in real activity is more pronounced for civil wars than it is for interstate conflicts.Second, government finances deteriorate as revenues contract while expenditures remain stable, thus raising primary deficits.Real government debt also declines, and governments shift 1.2% of GDP towards short maturities.Third, governments rely heavily on inflation to finance their deficits: the price level and money supply both rise by nearly 50%, eroding debt and generating seigniorage but also depressing investment and raising the cost of imported capital goods.

  PublisherDOI

• Military Spending and War

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Debt and Assets

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-07-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We examine the importance of corporate assets in supporting debt.Prior studies typically see only secured debt as asset backed, while the rest is deemed cash flow based.This implies only a small fraction of US debt is asset backed.Yet because corporations often resist offering security explicitly to debt, much unsecured debt is implicitly asset backed.Moreover, we find that the degree to which unsecured debt is asset backed can change with a firm's condition and the economic situation.Consequently, asset values can affect the quantum and price of borrowing, with effects accentuated in adverse economic conditions, as suggested by financial accelerator theories.Given that a corporation's debt is typically supported by both expected cash flows and assets, with the relative support varying with time and situation, the industry practice of classifying debt as "asset based" or "cash flow based" is overly categorical, especially for long term corporate bonds.

  PublisherDOI

• The Economic Consequences of War

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Robots and firm investment

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2025-10-11 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Using cross-country and German administrative data on robotization, we show that the impact of robots on firms and labor markets is limited. First, investment in robots is small and highly concentrated in a few industries, representing less than 0.3% of aggregate expenditures on equipment. Second, robotization does not grow as rapidly as Information Technology did in the past, and current growth is driven by gains in developing countries. Third, firms invest in robots when they face difficulties in finding workers and subsequently increase employment after the investment. The total employment effect in exposed industries and regions is negative but modest in magnitude. We discuss why the effects of robots are limited and demonstrate that other digital technologies have more potential for large economic impact.

  PublisherDOI

• Debt and Assets

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: Empirical Analysis of the Causes and Consequences of Financial Distress

  NSF · $401k · 2009–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Nittai Bergman

  162 shared

• Rodney Ramcharan

  University of Southern California

  124 shared

• Ralf Meisenzahl

  Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

  124 shared

• Tobias J. Moskowitz

  Yale University

  98 shared

• Ricardo J. Enriquez

  85 shared

• Esteban F. Klor

  68 shared

• Claude Berrebi

  Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  63 shared

• Nitish Kumar

  University of Bologna

  44 shared

Awards & honors

• The Journal of Human Resources Highly Cited Paper Award 2023
• Charles River Associates Award for Best Paper on Corporate F…
• The Review of Corporate Finance Studies best paper award, Fi…
• The Review of Corporate Finance Studies Best Paper Award, 20…
• The Journal of Finance Brattle Group Award, First Prize, 201…