ISET continues its student policy paper seminar series for the institute's second-year students. This time, Ketevan Bochorishvili, Natia Maisuradze, Nami Surguladze, Orkhan Suleymanli, and Nijat Guliyev presented their joint paper on agricultural development.

“The Economics of Nature. Can Georgia afford Economic Growth without Taking Care of its Nature?” was the title of a panel discussion jointly organized by GIZ and ISET, and examined an important issue facing the country.

On May 23, ISET-PI hosted the launch ceremony of ReforMeter, which was attended by representatives of government institutions, NGOs, and international organizations. Welcoming remarks were made by Shamennna K. Gall, the acting Deputy Economic Growth Offices of the US Embassy, and Bruno Balvanera, the EBRD Director for the Caucasus, Moldova, and Belarus.

On May 22, ISET hosted Francois Painchaud, the IMF Resident Representative in Georgia. Mr. Painchaud presented the 2017 May Regional Economic Outlook for the Caucasus and Central Asia, highlighting the three main areas of the global and regional environment, outlook and policy actions, and policy priorities.

In economics, there is a long-standing debate on whether emerging markets should adopt a fixed exchange rate currency regime or leave their exchange rates up to markets to decide. Intuitively, the exchange rate is just another price, similar to the price of a sack of potatoes, a liter of milk, or a kilogram of honey. Except that the exchange rate is the price of 1 unit of foreign currency (say, 1 US dollar) in terms of our domestic currency.