On July 18th, 2019, the ISET Policy Institute hosted a summary event of the ReforMeter project, the exact topic of which was “3 Phases of Reformeter: What are the benefits?” The goal of the meeting was to summarize the three phases of the project and to discuss its results and challenges.

The International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University (ISET, www.iset.ge) in Tbilisi, Georgia seeks to make an appointment at the ISET Policy Institute (www.iset-pi.ge), a leading economic policy think tank in the South Caucasus.

People face complicated financial decisions starting from a young age. Financial mistakes made early in life can be costly. Thus, Financial literacy could play an important role in sound financial decision-making. Financial illiteracy has implications for many household behaviors. People with the lack of financial literacy participate less in the stock market (van Rooij et al. 2011), choose mutual funds with higher fees (Hastings and Tejeda- Ashton, 2008), and accumulate less retirement wealth (Behrman et al. 2010).

A nationally representative sample of 359 Georgians, interviewed in early June 2019, reveals that the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) improved by nearly 1 index point, from -16.5 in May to -15.9 in June. A similar pattern was observed in the Present Situation Index, which increased by 1.8 index points (from -19.5 to -17.7). The Expectations Index however remained unchanged at -13.6.

ISET-PI’s growth projections for the second and third quarters of 2019 were revised upward by less than 0.1 percentage points. They now stand at 4.8% and 7.5% respectively. Geostat has increased the estimate of the average real GDP growth for the first quarter of 2019 to 4.9% (by around 0.2 percentage points).