On February 11th, ISET hosted Olivier Harlem, Ph.D. of the Erasmus School of Economics, Rotterdam. Dr. Harlem presented his job market paper, “Earmarks”. Earmarks were U.S. federal funds that are designated for local projects and were easy for local representatives to obtain for their electoral districts.

During the last three months, the Agricultural Policy Research Center (APRC) of ISET-PI was working on a study about family farming in Georgia. Within this project, we conducted interviews with farmers and owners of agribusinesses. These interviews elicited many intriguing facets of Georgian agriculture, but one aspect I found particularly interesting was that Georgian farmers apparently have a rather negative view on agricultural jobs.

The study assesses a possible impact of USAID-funded agricultural projects in Georgia on U.S. commodity production and U.S. jobs and workers rights. USAID's yearly obligation requires confirmation that USAID-funded activities do not impact U.S. jobs and workers rights and do not result in increased competition of Georgian products with similar commodities produced in the U.S.

On November 6, Vice President for Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Laura Tuck, Regional Director for the South Caucasus Henry Kerali, Program Leader for the South Caucasus Rashmi Shankar and other representatives of the World Bank Tbilisi Office visited ISET.

While in an ideal world the qualification preferences of job seekers and employers would coincide, in reality this is often not the case. Besides informational asymmetries (job seekers not knowing which qualifications are demanded by employers) the reason is that employers may be in need of qualifications that are not considered attractive by the job seekers.