ISET Economist Blog

12 March 2016

Florian Biermann, Ruediger Heining

Dumb Farmers Do Not Grow Big Potatoes

This week, the Georgian public was shocked when a gross lack of competence and aptitude among the country’s teachers was unveiled. As DFWatch.net reports on March 10th (quoting a Georgian source), of the 10,552 teachers registered for a competence check that took place in January, only 6,477 showed up in the first place, and of these, only 1,101 passed the test.

07 March 2016

Eric Livny

The Making of Nations

I was 13 when my family took the fateful decision to make ‘Aliyah’ to Israel back in 1977. ‘Aliyah’ (the act of going up in Hebrew) is a nice term describing Jewish ‘repatriation’ from the Diaspora (St. Petersburg, in my case) to the Holy Land. Etymologically, ‘Aliya’ originates in the ancient Israelite tradition of annual ‘pilgrimage tours’ to Jerusalem (situated almost 1km above sea level).

05 March 2016

Yaroslava Babych

Coordination Games

Some years ago my dad, who is an avid blogger, wrote a piece about a plague of disorderly advertising that was choking Kyiv. Notices promoting everything under the sun were plastered on the walls, fences, lamp-posts, in metro cars, on the bus stops, even on the pavement. Our own building’s entrance was a sad sight – always covered with debris of paper and glue.

27 February 2016

Giorgi Mzhavanadze, Florian Biermann

Don’t Talk about Georgia’s Future!

According to Micklewright (Macroeconomics and Data on Children, UNICEF 2000), a share of 7% of the Georgian gross domestic product of the year 1991 accounted for education. In 1994, this number had fallen to 1%. As Micklewright comments, such a dramatic decrease in educational expenditures was never seen before nor afterward in the history of any country. Recovery after the crisis was a long process.

22 February 2016

Eric Livny

A Georgian Man without Land Is Nobody?

Just like Duddy Kravitz, Georgian men (and women) appear to be reluctant to part with their parcels of land, however small and unproductive. Whatever the reason, Georgia sees almost no structural change out of agriculture, and, as a result, very low productivity and income growth for the poorest strata of its population. As of today, employment (or, rather, under-employment) in agriculture is a staggering 45% of Georgia’s total labor force.

20 February 2016

Olga Azhgibetseva, Yaroslava Babych

Did Azerbaijan Enter the Post-Oil Era?

Sometimes, transformation requires a crisis. Economists in particular are very well aware of this maxim. We are reminded of it every time a country undergoes an economic shock. A country in those times is a bit like a patient who gets the last warning from a doctor to drop the unhealthy habits or face irreversible consequences.

ISET Economist Blog

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