ISET Economist Blog

24 June 2019

Ia Katsia, Salome Deisadze

How Can You Be Sure? On the Agricultural Insurance in Georgia

Agricultural production is associated with a variety of risks, including market, institutional, and production risks. An important production factor in agriculture is the weather. Its uncontrollable nature makes weather risk the prevailing risk to agricultural production. Farmers have various informal and formal means of transferring and mitigating these risks. Informal means include savings, diversification, off-farm activities, etc. The most common formal means of risk mitigation is insurance. Insurance is a contract that transfers the risk of financial loss from an individual or business to an insurance company.

14 June 2019

Lika Goderdzishvili

The Dire State of Business Support Organizations in Georgia

In technological terms, there has never been a better time to be a small or medium size business owner: people can always get ahold of you and you can work wherever you need to. Creating an additional source of income catches people’s interests all over the world; as additional motivation, we often hear about the launch of yet another program directly helping these businesses, thus making it easier to become a start-upper. And here, the rhetorical question: “why not?!” pops into some people’s minds.

31 May 2019

Mariam Lobjanidze, Norberto Pignatti, Mariam Tsulukidze

A Persistent Negative Generation-Consumption Gap, a Puzzle to Be Explored

Looking at consumption and generation trends, it is evident that since August 2018 consumption typically exceeded generation. The negative generation-consumption gap also remained throughout April, amounting to 45 mln. kWh, with a total power generation of 966 mln. kWh and consumption of 1,012 mln. kWh. Yet why has the generation-consumption gap remained negative since August 2018? Should we also expect the negative gap to persist over the following months?

27 May 2019

Giorgi Mzhavanadze

Short-Term Swings of the Georgian Lari: A Guessing Game with High Stakes

In the last two weeks, the lari depreciated, once again, against the US dollar. Georgian currency lost about eight tetri against its American counterpart, causing quite a stir in the media, among political groups and economic experts. While government authorities claimed that the recent developments are short-term fluctuations driven by negative expectations, Turkish lira depreciation, dollar’s global strengthening, and are therefore not connected to the fundamentals of the Georgian economy, the members of the opposition were quick to blame incompetent fiscal and monetary policy.

20 May 2019

Selam Petersson, Mariam Tsulukidze

Does Your Smartphone Make You an “Unconscious” Villain?

Our dependence on smartphones can hardly be described as anything other than addictive. We invariably use them to document trips and thus to have the world at our fingertips. Though, these precious little gadgets have a dark history that we, as consumers, unconsciously support. Unfortunately, we will not be able to discuss in detail all the negative impacts within the supply chain of smartphones.

17 May 2019

Laura Manukyan

Chess Is to Play and Math Is for Life

At times math teachers use a legend, “mathematics in the game of chess”, as an introduction to Exponential Functions. The original myth tells of a mathematician in India who invented the game of chess and was subsequently bestowed a vast reward for its creation. The king of India was so impressed by the game that he offered the mathematician to “name your reward!” The inventor responded, “My wish is simple.

ISET Economist Blog

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