ISET Economist Blog

28 February 2014

Norberto Pignatti, Irakli Galdava, Giorgi Kelbakiani

Access to Electricity: Is Off-the-Grid an Option?

Assuring access to modern energy services for the whole population is a crucial step to improve human well-being and stimulate economic and social development. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has identified the lack of access to modern energy services as one of the main obstacles to overcome in order to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. In its 2011 World Energy Outlook, the IEA argued forcefully about the need to find and mobilize the resources required to extend access to modern energy services to the poor around the world.

24 February 2014

Giorgi Tsutskiridze, Florian Biermann

Should We Regulate?

Last week, we argued that political decision-makers have a tendency to overregulate a society, as new laws, even useless or harmful ones, create the impression that politicians are addressing problems in society. Moreover, we outlined the theory of a military historian who claims that the Red Army was an “overregulated army”, explaining the disproportionate death toll of the Red Army in the Second World War.

21 February 2014

Nino Doghonadze, Eric Livny

Lending by Georgian Banks Boosts Savings and Provides Shelter from Relatives in Need

Georgian households, being as poor as they are, don't save enough for the rainy day. Do low savings imply that Georgians are impatient to consume and do not care about their future? Is it in our genes that we prefer today’s egg to tomorrow’s chicken? Maybe our history, the history of a small nation struggling for survival, taught us to live our lives one day at a time?

17 February 2014

Giorgi Tsutskiridze, Florian Biermann

Regulating Rightly

Regulations apparently address problems of a society in a quick and uncomplicated way, and the call for regulations, therefore, is one of the most effective weapons in the arsenal of populists. Whether or not regulation will help to solve the problem, in any case, it creates the impression that politicians are doing something.

14 February 2014

Nikoloz Pkhakadze

When Morals Constrict the Markets

It is well known that government intervention, be it through taxation or regulation, can obstruct the functioning of markets. Yet there is another kind of influence that may also have strong effects on the efficiency of an economy but is much less discussed, namely the set of values, traditions, and moral standards a society subscribes to.

10 February 2014

Florian Biermann

Why Nations Fail

Over the winter holidays, I had the leisure to read the book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James A. Robinson (Crown Business 2012, 544 pages, Hardcover $20.00). Both authors are very eminent – one would not be surprised if Acemoglu, a Turkish-born Armenian and the most frequently cited contemporary economist, would receive the Nobel Prize in economics somewhere down the road.

ISET Economist Blog

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