Innovation-driven growth has long been understood as a restless, uneven process. In the Schumpeterian tradition – captured formally by Aghion and Howitt’s model of creative destruction – economies progress when new, higher-quality technologies displace older ones, pushing the productivity frontier outward.

Digital transformation is changing how businesses around the world operate, compete, and create value for their customers. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), embracing digital tools has become crucial not just for boosting productivity and efficiency, but also for building resilience and ensuring long-term success.

Georgia's post-pandemic recovery has been marked by strong macroeconomic performance, with real GDP surpassing pre-pandemic trends and labor market indicators showing notable improvement. However, this research note examines whether this recovery reflects genuine structural transformation or masks deeper challenges of labor market polarization.

Over the past decade, Georgia has experienced a notable increase in total exports, rising from approximately 2.86 billion USD in 2014 to over 6.55 billion USD in 2024. This represents a more than twofold increase, reflecting broader growth in the country's export sector.

In 2025, President Donald Trump reintroduced a sweeping tariff policy as a central element of his economic agenda. Framed as a “universal baseline tariff,” the new measures impose a 10% duty on all imports and introduce even higher reciprocal tariffs on countries with large trade surpluses with the United States. These policies mark a continuation and an escalation of Trump’s earlier protectionist approach during his first term.

Economic development of the municipalities (outside capital) is one of the key sustainable development challenges in Georgia. The capital city of Tbilisi, while accounting for nearly 1/3 of the country’s population generates 50% of GDP and keeps expanding, whereas the municipalities, with few exceptions, are losing population and suffering from high incidence of poverty, unemployment, and slow and weak economic development.