ISET Economist Blog

04 July 2016

Salome Gelashvili

Will Restricting Food Imports Save Georgian Farmers?

On June 2, 2016, the second EU-supported Farmers’ Congress of Georgia was held at the Tbilisi exposition center. Around 150 farmers from different parts of Georgia had an opportunity to meet with the government representatives and discuss the current challenges of Georgian agriculture.

30 June 2016

Salome Gelashvili, Eric Livny

Food Prices Reach Lowest Mark. At Least in Tbilisi

Retail food prices decreased by 7.6% m/m (compared to the last week of May) and 10.1% y/y (compared to June 2015). The biggest drops were observed for tomatoes (-65.5%), cucumbers (-63.3%), and eggplant (-33.7%). Only a few products gained in value. The highest increases were recorded for cabbage (12.8%), tea (7.3%), and rice (7.2%).

27 June 2016

Eric Livny

We'll Take Our Countries Back and Make Them Great Again!

For the likes of Boris Johnson, currently UK’s most popular politician and a leading figure of the Brexit revolt, “The European Union has become too remote, too opaque and not accountable enough to the people it is meant to serve.” But how about the UK itself? How close are 10 Downing Street or Westminster to the working-class folks of England’s industrial north? How representative is Britain’s Eton-educated ‘political class’ of the people they are meant to serve?

25 June 2016

Rafael Castro

High Wages not Walls

People who decide to leave their country and test their luck elsewhere are usually no random sample of a population. In his 1987 paper “Self-Selection and the Earnings of Immigrants” (American Economic Review 77, pp. 531-553), Harvard Political Scientist George J. Borjas discusses the so-called self-selection of migrants. As of 1987, the standard view among migration economists was that migrants, at least those who came to the United States, belonged to the “upper tails” of the income distributions in their home countries.

22 June 2016

Salome Gelashvili, Eric Livny

Georgian Consumers Outsmarting Supermarket Managers?

Seasons change, and so do Georgian food prices. In the second week of June, Georgia’s major food retail networks (Carrefour, Goodwill, Fresco, and SPAR) lowered their prices by an average of 3.9% y/y and 1.8% m/m. Compared to the end of May, prices moved the most for the following food items: eggplant (-21%), pasta (-10.3%), and coffee (-5.7%); wheat flour (+11%), buckwheat (+10.5%), and garlic (+6.8%).

20 June 2016

Givi Kupatadze

MINDSPACE: a New Way to Influence Behavior through Public Policy

In November 2015, the National Audit Office of the UK has published a report saying: “The Department for Work and Pensions has successfully introduced automatic enrolment to workplace pensions for large and medium-sized employers.” The National Audit Office found that 58,000 employers have enrolled 5.4 million workers between October 2012 and August 2015. The huge increase in enrolment was due to a small policy change introduced by the UK government in October 2012.

ISET Economist Blog

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