ISET Economist Blog

18 May 2020

Salome Gelashvili, Ia Katsia, Salome Deisadze

Agricultural Anti-Crisis Plan Assessment

Agricultural and rural development play an important role in the country’s socio-economic development. The restrictions imposed during the pandemic have hindered spring agricultural works which have significantly worsened conditions for farmers and stalled their future potential. Consequently, the Georgian government developed an anti-crisis plan, “Caring for Farmers and Agriculture”, that was presented on 12 March. The proposal entails two forms of aid: direct assistance and sectoral support.

01 May 2020

Mariam Tsulukidze, Norberto Pignatti, Mariam Lobjanidze

The Implications of COVID-19 on the Georgian Power Market

The consequences of COVID-19 on tourism and in the industrial and service sectors have been discussed broadly recently. However, little has been said about the current and future implications on the Georgian power sector. The worldwide pandemic has already had and is still expected to have, quite significant implications on both the demand and supply sides of the electricity market. Although at this stage, we cannot estimate the exact scale of the effects, it is possible to represent a general theoretical framework of the existing and potential impacts.

06 April 2020

Tamta Maridashvili

Should the World Sacrifice the Economy to Save Lives Today?

No two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever been at war wrote American political commentator and author Thomas L. Friedman in 1996. Since then, of course, there have been plenty of instances of countries with McDonald’s warring, including Russia and Georgia. Though, one should not take Friedman’s phrase too literally. Rather he implies that the spread of McDonald's is a part of a worldwide phenomenon of countries integrating with the global economy, which, in turn, makes wars less likely.

03 April 2020

Mariam Lobjanidze, Mariam Tsulukidze, Norberto Pignatti

The Generation-Consumption Gap Keeps Increasing. What Could or Should Be Done About It?

Looking at the consumption and generation trends of the past year, it is evident that Georgia is an electricity importing country during most months, with consumption almost always exceeding domestic generation. The only exceptions over the last 12 months were May and June, when the generation-consumption gap briefly became positive, reverting to the negative again in July. This is quite a dramatic change from how the country’s generation-consumption gap looked back in 2010 when the country exported almost seven times more electricity (1524.3 GWh) than it imported (222.1 GWh) and thermal power generation was reduced to 682.8 GWh.

27 March 2020

Ana Burduli, Mariam Katsadze, Giorgi Papava

Regional Impacts of COVID-19 Shock to HORECA Sector

The outbreak of the virus and the corresponding containment measures have started to severely affect the global economy. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its Interim Economic Outlook Report (2020) on March 2nd downgraded 2020 real GDP growth projections for almost every country. The largest reduction in growth projections is seen for China (-0.8 percentage points) with a worldwide real GDP growth rate expected to decline from 2.9% (November 2019 forecast) to 2.4%.

17 March 2020

Yaroslava Babych, Davit Keshelava, Giorgi Mzhavanadze

It’s Not Who You Trade With – It’s Who You Produce With: Measuring Georgia’s Integration into Global and Regional Value Chains

We live in a world where the production of a single good typically involves manufacturing inputs from many different countries around the globe. For example, a typical iPhone production takes place in as many as 7 countries, including the USA, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and even Switzerland. This is what is known to economists as global value chains (GVC). The emergence of GVC more than two decades ago transformed the way economists think about countries’ comparative advantage and specialization in production.

ISET Economist Blog

A blog about economics in the South Caucasus financed within the institutional grant by the Government of Sweden.