02
October
2017
On 26 September, the World Economic Forum published The Global Competitiveness Report 2017–2018. The full report contains detailed profiles and rankings for 137 countries based on 2016 data.
02
October
2017
In the summer of 2017, Georgia experienced an unusually high number of forest fires across the entire country. 35 forest fires were recorded just in August (official data reporting the size of area burned by these fires is not yet available). In almost all regions of the country, several fires were reported. Among them, the conflagration in the Borjomi gorge had the most dramatic consequences: it lasted for seven days (20-27 August), and more than 100 hectares of forest were destroyed. Many people claim that these cannot be all accidental events.
14
September
2017
According to the preliminary statistics released by GeoStat, Georgia’s real GDP growth was 4% year over year (YoY) in Q2 2017, which fell short of the 5.8% that had been expected by the ISET-PI GDP forecast made in July. This shortfall was driven not by weak performance, but overly optimistic predictions of ISET-PI’s empirical model, influenced by high actual growth in the first quarter (5.1% YoY).
20
July
2017
We started forecasting the annual growth rate at the start of 2014 (see our January 2014 and February 2014 publications for a note on methodology). Based on January’s data, we expect annual growth in 2017 to be 6.2% in the worst-case or “no growth” scenario, and 6.6% in the best-case or “average long-term growth” scenario. Our “middle-of-the-road” scenario (based on the average growth in the last four quarters) predicts a 6.3% real GDP growth in 2017.
10
July
2017
ISET-PI trains Competition Agency of Georgia Staff in the basics of econometrics and STATA. The objective of the training is to strengthen the capacity of the Competition Agency staff to use STATA to conduct independent data analysis, run OLS regressions and interpret robust results.
