ISET Economist Blog

20 December 2013

Aram Derdzyan, Astghik Mkhitaryan

Looking Over the Border: The Pension Reform in Armenia

On the first of January, Armenia will adopt an entirely new pension system. This radical reform addresses two problems: widespread poverty among the elderly and a lack of capital in the economy. The very same problems also exist in Georgia, where the standard governmental pension currently is 150 lari, and where the economy is suffering from high capital costs due to notoriously low saving rates.

16 December 2013

Giorgi Kelbakiani, Eric Livny

The Georgian Egg of Discord

While ISET’s Khachapuri Index continues to climb up in a perfectly predictable fashion – driven by the seasonal increase in the price of cheese – a bit of drama is being provided by the ups and downs in the price of eggs. According to ISET data, egg prices, which for a couple of years hovered around 29 tetri a piece, suddenly collapsed in June and July 2013 to a minimum of about 26 tetri.

13 December 2013

Nino Doghonadze, Florian Biermann

On Imitation, Forbidden Fruits, and Sour Grapes

For many observers, the Georgian job market is a mystery. Companies are bitterly complaining about a lack of engineers, forcing them to withhold the expansion of production capacities and to cut down investments. Yet Georgian young people, who could make good fortunes by studying technical subjects, prefer to learn the law, business administration and the like, qualifications that are oversupplied in the market and on average do not yield high salaries.

09 December 2013

Olga Azhgibetseva, Florian Biermann

The Need for Strategic Research

When a country engages in scientific research, the fruits are harvested by the whole of humanity. Fundamental research, generating knowledge without direct applications but needed for developing applications, is published in international scientific journals open to everybody.

06 December 2013

Nikoloz Pkhakadze, Florian Biermann

Location Games

One or two years ago, a Lavazza’s take-away coffee shop opened on the side of Georgia’s east-west highway in the area of Zestaponi. You always could find plenty of coffee shops in Tbilisi, but it was a novelty to have them next to the highway. Soon afterward, another coffee bar opened along the road, and surprisingly, it was again set up close to Zestaponi.

02 December 2013

Maka Chitanava

Language and Economics

In the 1930s, the American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf put forward the hypothesis that people of different mother tongues perceive the world differently. According to linguistic relativity or Whorfianism, both the grammatical structure and the vocabulary of a language influence the way how people think.

ISET Economist Blog

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