ISET Economist Blog

28 October 2013

Maka Chitanava

The Georgian Solution to the Tragedy of the Commons

In Georgia today and in Europe in the past, villages owned pastures where every shepherd and cattle-herder in the community could take his animals. Grazing on these pastures was free and unrestricted. This land, owned by all villagers jointly, is traditionally referred to as the “commons” (in the last years, the term has been extended to also refer to free-to-use internet content).

25 October 2013

Ia Vardishvili

Georgia's Democratic Challenge

In his 1991 book “The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century”, the famous American political scientist Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) identifies three global democratization waves in the history of humankind. The first wave was the creation of the classical democracies in the United Kingdom and North America and the ongoing democratization process of the 19th century in France and other European countries.

21 October 2013

Eric Livny, Lasha Labadze

Georgia on the Development Frontier: From Subsistence Agriculture to Exchange

While written in 1991, “The Development Frontier” by Peter Bauer has lost none of its relevance for Georgia and other predominantly agrarian economies of the 21st century. Economic development, suggests Bauer, “begins with the replacement of subsistence activities by production for sale.

19 October 2013

Eric Livny

Assessing the Impact of Development Projects – Looking for a Black Cat in a Dark Room and Hoping that the Cat is There?

Do development projects reach their stated objectives, such as reducing poverty, improving skills, creating jobs, etc.? This turns out to be a complicated question about project impact that a simple before-and-after measurement would not help answer. Why?

14 October 2013

Nino Abashidze, Florian Biermann

The University of Life

When economists speak about education and human capital, they usually mean formal education. It is provided in schools and universities by formally qualified teachers. These are imparting knowledge that is laid down in curricula, and the result of the learning process is testified by certificates and diplomas conferred to those students who passed exams.

11 October 2013

Giorgi Kelbakiani, Norberto Pignatti

Electricity Generation in Georgia II: Blowing Wind into the System

In the first part of our article, we pointed out that electricity generation by hydropower is subject to strong seasonal variations. We argued that the seasonality of hydropower reduces the profitability of new plants, as they deliver the highest output in the time of the year when electricity is relatively cheap anyway, while they produce rather little when electricity is expensive.

ISET Economist Blog

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