ISET Economist Blog

19 September 2016

Salome Gelashvili, Yaroslava Babych

What Do Politicians Promise Us: a Popular Guide to Political Platforms on Agriculture

As the Election Day of October 8th approaches, we hear more and more about the platforms of Georgian political parties. Given that political competition is very fierce, one naturally expects to hear some blatantly populist statements – the kind of political promises (known to humanity from the times of Aristophanes) which are very popular among the voters, but are hard or impossible to implement in practice.

12 September 2016

Zurab Abramishvili

Do Teachers Respond to Incentives? Results of a Philanthropic Experiment in Sachkhere, Georgia

What can bring the brightest among Georgian university graduates to the country’s public schools? While money alone may not do the trick, it is difficult to see a solution that does not represent a radical departure from the current remuneration system which places teachers – who hold the keys to Georgia’s future as a nation! – at the very bottom of the social ladder.

12 September 2016

Ia Katsia, Eric Livny

To Bee or not to Bee?

The economic significance of bees extends far beyond honey production. As the National Resource Defense Council writes in 2011 (“Why We Need Bees: Nature’s Tiny Workers Put Food on Our Tables”), the value of the honey that bees produced in the US in that year amounted to 150 million dollars, while the value of the harvested crops that were pollinated by bees was 15 billion dollars, i.e., greater by a factor of 100! Having bees around is not primarily beneficial for the beekeepers, but even more for anyone else who grows crops, fruits, or vegetables.

06 September 2016

Florian Biermann, Maka Chitanava, Mariam Zaldastanishvili

Homo Economicus Sisyphus

In the last two decades, happiness has moved into the focus of economic inquiry. Frey and Stutzer (“What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research”, Journal of Economic Literature 20, 2002, pp. 402-435) argue convincingly that gross domestic product (GDP), unemployment, inflation, and many other indicators of economic performance are primarily interesting because they are correlated with the well-being of people.

05 September 2016

Maka Chitanava, Yaroslava Babych

Georgian Pension Reform – an Experiment in Libertarian Paternalism?

Starting from October 1, 2017, a private retirement savings system will be launched in Georgia as part of broader pension reform. This reform has been discussed by Nino Doghonadze and Yaroslava Babych in Decent Income in Old Age: Georgian Dream or Reality? on the ISET Economist. Today we will focus only on one very interesting aspect of the reform – the “opt-out” principle and its implementation in the Georgian realities.

11 July 2016

Maka Chitanava, Nino Doghonadze

Overworked and Underpaid

In 2014, 22% of Georgia’s working adults reported having worked more than 40 hours per week, i.e. working overtime. This may not sound like a lot, but, as an average figure, it hides a great deal of geographic variation in the incidence of overtime work. Very few people work overtime in places where there are almost no jobs, such as Kakheti or Racha. Conversely, more than 50% work over 8 hours/day in the dynamically developing Tbilisi, and as many as 44% in the adjacent Kvemo Kartli.

ISET Economist Blog

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