ISET Economist Blog

17 April 2017

Olga Azhgibetseva

How Businessmen Grow Wings

The tradition – and, in most cases, the only way – for Georgian entrepreneurs to finance their businesses and ideas is bank lending, so-called debt financing. However, this source of financing is very limited for start-ups and early-stage businesses, due to the high level of risk involved, the unavailability of collateral assets, and high loan interest rates, which are almost unaffordable for companies that do not generate sufficient returns yet.

12 April 2017

Salome Deisadze, Irakli Kochlamazashvili, Phatima Mamardashvili

Joint Marketing – A Key to Success?!

Back in 2013, the Government of Georgia (GoG) approved a new law entitled “On Agricultural Cooperatives.” The primary goal of this legislation was to support agriculture and rural development in the country by strengthening agricultural cooperatives. Since then, agricultural cooperatives have been springing up like mushrooms; 13,000 farmers have already been registered in 1,500 cooperatives. In order to strengthen their capacity, donors led by the European Union have been providing financial assistance as well as trainings and advisory services to cooperatives and their members.

10 April 2017

Maka Chitanava, Norberto Pignatti

If You Could Choose Where to Be Born What Country Would You Pick?

The ISET team conducted an online survey that began with the following question: if you could choose where to be born, what country would you pick? We intentionally formulated the question in this way, which is very different from asking “where would you like to travel or to migrate?” This formulation was meant to allow us to look into characteristics of countries to determine which ones individuals find interesting and appealing if a veil of ignorance is added about their initial standing in the society (e.g. in family and/or social class status at birth).

08 April 2017

Florian Biermann

Bashar al-Assad’s Three Puzzles

In 2007, an American businessman and friend of the then Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, was visiting Damascus before continuing his journey to Jerusalem. On the morning of his departure to Israel, the Mukhabarat, Syria’s secret service, knocked at his hotel room. The Syrian agents calmed down the scared businessman – he was not to be taken to some torture prison, of which there were many in Syria.

01 April 2017

Olga Azhgibetseva

What Does It Take to Become a “Vakeli“?

Vake has always been one of the most prestigious districts in Tbilisi and being a “Vakeli” has been associated with high social status for no obvious reasons. In the picture: Vake Park, one of a few green places in Tbilisi and thus a big asset for the Vake district. Maybe having an opportunity to walk every day in this park makes people living in Vake so special.

01 April 2017

Eric Livny

"Georgian Railways" Reach a Critical Crossroads

River Astarachay, which divides the Azerbaijani and Iranian nations, is no Rubicon, and its crossing over a newly constructed bridge by an Azərbaycan Dəmir Yolları’s GE/LKZ TE33A Evolution locomotive was hardly noticed by Georgian media. Yet, the project has immense implications for the future of transportation across the Caucasus.

ISET Economist Blog

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