ISET Economist Blog

08 May 2017

Irakli Shalikashvili

Yet Another (Questionable) Farewell to Street Vendors?

Tbilisi residents have already experienced a fair number of cycles in street vending regulations where local authorities tolerate, then regulate, and then evict street vendors. These cycles correspond with economic trends and election cycles starting in 2006 when street vending was declared illegal by the Tbilisi Government and the first attempts were made to enforce the ban.

06 May 2017

Giorgi Mzhavanadze

Not So Fast….Is The Nightmare of Georgian Road (Un)Safety About to End?

On April 21, the Parliament of Georgia approved changes to the Road Traffic law introducing the so-called demerit points system (DPS) in Georgia. Under the DPS every driver will receive a reserve of 100 points. For each traffic violation, in addition to the monetary penalty, the points will be deducted from a 100 points “allowance”.

01 May 2017

Levan Pavlenishvili, Norberto Pignatti

Georgia’s Energy Security in a Nutshell

Listening to discussions in professional circles and among policymakers, one can easily notice that the topic of energy security is often used as a reason to justify certain decisions or point out the problems existing in the sector. Energy security is frequently associated with energy “independence” – a condition that only a few countries in the world can claim to have achieved.

29 April 2017

Laura Manukyan, Florian Biermann

What Can Georgia Learn from Sweden’s Educational Disaster?

Between 2000 and 2012, Sweden fell in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) by 16 places from the 7th to the 23rd rank, and in the 2015 PISA study, Sweden ranked 28th of 34 countries in mathematics! As the OECD writes: “No other PISA-participating country saw a steeper decline in student performance over the past decade than Sweden.” Who is to blame?

24 April 2017

Irakli Kochlamazashvili, Nino Kakulia, Phatima Mamardashvili

Working Together for a Bigger Pie

The village of Chkhakaura is located en route to the famous Bakhmaro resort in the Gurian Mountains. This settlement is not only in a picturesque environment but also the home of hard-working people, some of whom we introduced in our success story about the agricultural cooperative “Samegobro 2014”. Since their registration as a formal cooperative back in 2014, this group of fish farmers is becoming increasingly successful.

19 April 2017

Davit Keshelava, Eric Livny

Bread Should Be Baked By the Baker!

American and Western European visitors to Georgia are fascinated by the fact that middle-aged Georgian taxi drivers often brandish a couple of engineering degrees, while young hotel receptionists and shop assistants frequently come with law, business, and international relations education. Having spent a couple of days in Tbilisi, visitors may come to imagine that Georgia is so abundant in human capital that entry into these fairly undemanding occupations is extremely competitive.

ISET Economist Blog

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