
“The lobby of the Metropole, Moscow's lovingly restored grand hotel a few blocks from Red Square, is almost deserted on this gray spring afternoon. That's just fine with Jeffrey D. Sachs, a boyish-looking 38-year-old Harvard professor who is now probably the most important economist in the world. He has appropriated a cluster of comfortable armchairs for a meeting with two members of his team, Americans who work full time in Russia. The agenda is Russia's safety net or, more precisely, whether unemployed workers will be able to make ends meet.

Georgia experienced a significant rise in Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB1) after its independence from the Soviet Union. Currently, it is among twelve countries worldwide where sex imbalances at birth have been observed. The other countries are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, China, Hong Kong (SAR of China), India, the Republic of Korea, Montenegro, Taiwan (Province of China), Tunisia, and Vietnam.

Back in 2005, as there was no mobile coverage, my uncle drove dozens of kilometers to the Jvarboseli village in Tusheti to inform me that I had enrolled in university. Now, in 2020, there is still no mobile signal in most Tusheti villages, including Jvarboseli, however, people can use broadband internet to reach out to the world!

The emergence of GVC, global value chains, around more than two decades ago transformed the way economists think about countries’ comparative advantage and specialization in production. It has also transformed the understanding of what it takes for a country to be successfully integrated into world trade networks and derive maximum benefit from global trade.

ISET’s faculty continues to prove itself on the world stage with no fewer than two papers soon to be published in international journals. Both papers were authored by Professor Muhammad Asali, a veteran member of ISET’s faculty and graduate of Colombia University; Muhammad later taught at Colombia, as well as New York University and Union College.