On May 25-27, the FREE Network Retreat was held in Minsk, Belarus. The Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies (FREE) is a joint initiative of SITE (Stockholm), BEROC (Minsk), BICEPS (Riga), CEFIR (Moscow), KSE (Kyiv), and ISET (Tbilisi). All members meet annually and share their experiences. Each organization’s researchers deliver presentations on their recent or ongoing research and get professional feedback from the representatives of their fellow organizations. Irakli [Rati] Kochlamazashvili from ISET delivered a presentation on his recent policy paper, entitled: “Size and Sector Effects in the Performance of Agricultural Cooperatives: A Case Study in Georgia.”

This research is based on data collected from EU-supported cooperatives (through the ENPARD project) during 2014-2017 and aims to identify whether there is any size (by asset value and the number of members within a cooperative) and sector (e.g. apiculture, viticulture, etc.), which affects the financial performance of agricultural cooperatives in Georgia.

The ambition of the FREE network is to bridge the gap between ongoing academic research and policy-making, to stimulate and contribute to the international debate, as well as to intensify the interaction and discussion with other researchers, policy-makers, and business representatives across the world.