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).

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.

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?

Evacuation is one of the most frequently used words in Georgian TV in the last two weeks, arguably due to an inflation of fibber bomb warnings. Rustavi 2, Imedi, Parliament, airport, bank offices, and schools – all were targeted by these macabre hoaxes.

Measuring economic developments is often a laborious business. Consider, for example, the Consumer Price Index (CPI). One first has to define the so-called consumption basket that contains the goods and services whose prices you want to track. These goods and services have to be represented in the basket in the right proportions, reflecting the consumption patterns of an average consumer.