An ISET-PI team led by EEPRC’s Head Norberto Pignatti is conducting a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) on Law of Water Resources Management.

On December 23, a lunch meeting was organized for EPAC members to discuss whether laws on antidumping are necessary. The event was organized by Georgian Lawyers for Independent Professions, Governing for Growth (G4G), and the Society of Free Individuals. ISET Policy Institute researcher Gigla Mikautadze was invited as a guest speaker and presented his views on the need for anti-dumping regulations and possible economic consequences.

As economic development progresses, air pollution and the lack of green spaces have become increasingly painful issues for Tbilisi citizens. In our previous blog, Breathing in Tbilisi, we discussed the negative outcomes – in terms of air pollution and tree-cutting – generated by the actions of self-interested developers facing an inert civil society and a local government that is unwilling and/or unable to protect the green public spaces.

Tempelhofer Feld is a beloved communal recreation area of Berliners. Tempelhofer Feld is not just a park. It is a park built instead of an airport. In 2008, when the almost century-old Tempelhofer airport was closed, the city of Berlin declared the centrally located, 386-hectare (!) open space for public use. Today, the area has six-kilometer cycling, skating, and jogging trail, a 2.5-hectare barbeque area, a dog-walking field covering around four hectares, and an enormous picnic area for visitors – everything we, Tbilisi citizens, can only dream of.

People who decide to leave their country and test their luck elsewhere are usually no random sample of a population. In his 1987 paper “Self-Selection and the Earnings of Immigrants” (American Economic Review 77, pp. 531-553), Harvard Political Scientist George J. Borjas discusses the so-called self-selection of migrants. As of 1987, the standard view among migration economists was that migrants, at least those who came to the United States, belonged to the “upper tails” of the income distributions in their home countries.