The economy of Israel is a technologically advanced market economy, including rapidly developing high-tech and service sectors. As of 2011, Israel ranks 17th among 187 world nations on the UN's Human Development Index, which places it in the category of "Very Highly Developed".
The major industrial sectors include metal products, electronic and biomedical equipment, processed foods, chemicals, and transport equipment. Israel diamond industry is one of the world's centers for diamond cutting and polishing. Relatively poor in natural resources, Israel depends on imports of petroleum, coal, food, uncut diamonds and production inputs, though the country's nearly total reliance on energy imports may change with recent discoveries of large natural gas reserves off its coast. Israel is a world leader in software, telecommunication and semiconductors development. The high concentration of high-tech industries in Israel, which are backed by a strong venture capital industry, gave it the nickname "Silicon Wadi", which is considered second in importance only to its Californian counterpart. The country was the destination for Berkshire Hathaway's first investment outside the US when it purchased ISCAR Metalworking, and the first research and development centers outside the USA for companies including Intel and Microsoft. Israel is also a major tourist destination, with 3.45 million foreign tourists visiting in 2010.
In September 2010, Israel was invited to join the OECD. Israel has also signed free trade agreements with the European Union, the United States, the European Free Trade Association, Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Jordan, Egypt, and on 18 December 2007, became the first non-Latin-American country to sign a free trade agreement with the Mercosur trade bloc.
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“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For in the division of the nations of the whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord’s portion: whom, being his firstborn, he nourisheth with discipline, and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him. Therefore all their works are as the sun before him, and his eyes are continually upon their ways.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus 17:17-9.