ISET would like to congratulate two of its resident faculty members, Karine Torosyan and Norberto Pignatti, together with our visiting faculty member Maksym Obrizan, on the publication of their new joint paper “Job market outcomes of IDPs: the case of Georgia”, in the IZA Discussion Paper Series from the Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn (the series is ranked 6th worldwide for economics by IDEAS/RePEc).

In January 2018, an IMF Working Paper published new results on the shadow economy situation for 158 countries from 1991 to 2015. According to Medina and Schneider (2018), the shadow economy in Georgia during that period constituted, on average, 64.9% of GDP – the highest indicator in the world! In 2015 (the last year available), things were slightly better for Georgia, with the share of the shadow economy standing at 53%.

I believe we all are bound by the notion that technology is the thing. We might be convinced it’s a sign of progress. Those very clever engineers have finally saved humanity, not just by envisioning what will save the masses from wasting their minutes and seconds, but they also help to propel all sorts of time-saving devices. There are, of course, good reasons to argue for how important technological advances are.

In February 2018, Georgian power plants generated 934 mln. KWh of electricity. This corresponds to a 15% increase in total generation, compared to the previous year (in 2017, total generation in January was 809.2 mln. kWh). The increase in generation on a yearly basis comes from an increase in wind and hydro power generation.

Geostat has published its rapid estimate of real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2017. Estimated growth stands at 4.7%, which is only 0.1% higher than the value forecasted in the last update of our model.