ISET Economist Blog

05 June 2015

Eric Livny, Levan Bzhalava

Outsmarting Laziness: The Most Evil Giant of All Giants

Creativity is the ability to produce new ideas and to find innovative solutions to problems. It is crucial for economic growth because creative ideas translate into new products and more efficient technological processes, which, in turn, generate new (more productive) jobs and better (more competitive) products.

01 June 2015

Eric Livny

Is Small (And Medium) All That Beautiful?

Most development practitioners subscribe to the view that vibrant small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) are crucial for the health of a country’s economy. The SME sector is crucial, the argument goes because it creates employment and serves as a hotbed of entrepreneurial talent. Additionally, SMEs are often seen as a source of new, fast-growing industries, contributing to a price-reducing and quality-improving competition with large and old firms that tend to dominate markets in small countries such as Georgia.

29 May 2015

Lasha Lanchava

Georgia’s Underground Economy

Economic activities which are not registered (and therefore not taxed) are commonly called Shadow Economy or Underground Economy. Are there shadowy corners in Georgia’s economy? Not just corners!

25 May 2015

Florian Biermann

The Proposed Examination Reform: Don’t Change a Winning Concept!

Studying at Georgian universities in the 1990s was ludicrous. The students or their parents negotiated with the heads of the exam committees and/or the deans of the faculties about the “terms and conditions”, i.e. the bribes that would have to be paid and the “services” that would be delivered in exchange.

22 May 2015

Nino Doghonadze, Eric Livny

Europe Wants Georgia. But Not Georgians

In March 2015, 31-year-old Tamar Trapaidze died of severe toxicity in Italy. Like many Georgian women of her generation, Tamar was an illegal immigrant employed as an in-home care worker by an Italian family. Being “illegal”, she must have feared deportation, which is probably why she was unable to receive adequate medical treatment.

15 May 2015

Jan Klingelhofer

The Paradox of Soviet Excellence

Here is a question that has bothered me for a while and I am surprised that nobody else seems to have asked it before: How comes Western countries had the better orchestras (collectives) and the Soviet Union the better classical music soloists during the Cold War? Would one not expect the contrary?

ISET Economist Blog

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