ISET Economist Blog

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.

10 April 2016

Florian Biermann

The Impact of Religion on Georgia’s Economy

According to a study from 2015 by WIN/Gallup, 93% of Georgians consider themselves to be religious. There is only one country in the world that has a higher rate, namely Thailand, where this number stands at 94%, while the same percentage of religious people as in Georgia could only be found in Armenia, Bangladesh, and Morocco. All other nations of the world are less enchanted about religion.

05 April 2016

Ia Katsia, Eric Livny

XXI Century Arrives to Kakheti, with soplidan.ge

Have you ever had a problem buying healthy products or being lazy to go shopping in the open-air bazaar? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to order natural and fresh food that gets delivered straight to your door that is not of the fast-food, take-away variety? There might just be the reason for optimism with the story of soplidan.ge (“from the village”).

ISET Economist Blog

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