In Georgia, employment is often found not through prevailing in fair, orderly selection processes, but through personal connections. This is a well-known fact almost nobody denies. It is evident in almost every Georgian firm and institution. In a hospital, you encounter a “nurse” not capable of the most basic medical accomplishments, in one of Tbilisi’s universities you meet a “cleaning woman” who is mentally ill, known for scaring everybody through aggressive and inappropriate behavior, and in the railway station, you buy a ticket from a clerk who knows nothing about regulations, timetables, and trains.

Assume you have lent your brother 1000 laris, and because he is a close family member, you do not charge interest from him. One day you get a phone call from your brother, and he offers you to pay back the debt either today or one year from now. What would you choose? If you act in line with standard economic theory, you would choose to get the money back today.

Georgian agriculture was more developed in Soviet times than it is today. Despite great overall technological progress almost everywhere in the last 20 years, Georgia moved back when it comes to agriculture. In the year 1990, at the end of the Soviet Union, the number of cattle exceeded 4 million, while today it is just a little more than 1 million.