ISET Economist Blog

08 May 2016

Levan Pavlenishvili, Florian Biermann

No Price Caps in the Electricity Wholesale Market!

This article is about a highly technical matter. To avoid losing all our readers in the very beginning, let us start with a famous doctrine by Montesquieu: Les lois inutiles affaiblissent les lois nécessaires. This principle, literally meaning “useless laws weaken the necessary laws”, should always be kept in mind by lawmakers and politicians. If a regulation is not beneficial, then it is almost surely beneficial to get rid of the regulation. Some great Georgians endorsed this principle, like Kakha Bendukidze, who is widely praised for having erased many unnecessary rules from Georgia’s legal codes.

02 May 2016

Simon Appleby, Eric Livny

Will Georgia Be Able to Benefit from Bilateral Free Trade Agreements?

The Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement between Georgia and the EU, brought into effect in 2014, was hailed at the time by many as being of great importance to Georgian manufacturers and food/beverage producers. Yet, skeptics commented that 1) Georgia had already had more than 7000 articles duty-free and quota-free under the pre-existing GSP+ trade terms granted by the EU for many years, and 2) very few exporters had been able to take advantage of these concessions.

30 April 2016

Salome Gelashvili, Yaroslava Babych

We May Not Be Hungry, but We Are Starving...

It is a well-known fact that nearly a half of the Georgian population is involved in agriculture, while Georgia imports around 60% of all the food it consumes. High food import share and food security are important issues for Georgia, widely discussed among the policymakers and in the media. One issue that remains largely in the shadows of public attention is Georgia’s struggle with nutritional deficiencies and unhealthy, undiversified diets.

25 April 2016

Nino Doghonadze, Norberto Pignatti, Karine Torosyan

Are Working Women Happy Women? View from the Greater Caucasus

Already in ancient times, philosophers debated the nature of happiness and the recipes for a happy and fulfilling life. Today this question is also hotly debated by scientists and politicians, who are particularly interested in what can be done to increase the happiness of their voters (and citizens, more generally). Happiness has become so important nowadays that four countries: Bhutan, Ecuador, UAE, and Venezuela went so far as to employ ministers of happiness!

24 April 2016

Salome Deisadze, Giorgi Mzhavanadze

Lost from the Start

14 years ago, the American educationalists Valerie E. Lee and David Burkham published a highly noticed and controversial study titled “Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School” (Economic Policy Institute 2002). The authors work with a sample of 16,000 children who entered US kindergartens in 1998 and 1999 and who had taken the ECLS-K entry test, measuring children’s basic reading and mathematical skills.

11 April 2016

Eric Livny

The Samtredia Redemption

Nino Kakulia was born in Samtredia on 15 October 1991, in the last days of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. By the time Nino and independent Georgia were celebrating their 13th birthdays, the Georgian government embarked on a series of long-overdue reforms, one of which was about cleansing the country’s higher education system from corruption.

ISET Economist Blog

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