Human capital is the biggest asset of each and every think tank. In securing reliable and high-quality researchers, think tanks compete with much more powerful competitors—i.e., governments, state agencies, private companies, banks, and consulting companies. The region’s think tanks, therefore, have to devise special motivation strategies to retain existing staff and attract new talented individuals to opt for this career.

In the frames of the memorandum of understanding between ISET Policy Institute and the Business Association of Georgia (BAG), ISET-PI offered a compressed four-day training to the staff of the association. Senior researchers of the policy institute, Maya Grigolia, and Nino Doghonadze conducted the training in macroeconomics 101.

On September 22-26, 2014 researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) in Germany visited ISET in the framework of their research tour to Georgia. Several panel discussions and workshops were conducted with the goal to discuss current challenges of agriculture and rural development in transition countries.

On 3-7 February 2014 a group of ISET-PI researchers was trained in Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA). The main goal of implementing RIA is to ensure that the benefits of a regulation exceed its costs for society as a whole.

On February 4, 2014, Daniel Levy, professor of economics at Bar Ilan University and Emory University and member of ISET’s International Faculty Committee, presented his paper “Asymmetric Price Adjustment in the Small", (that he co-authored with Haipeng Chen, Sourav Ray, and Marc Bergen) to ISET professors, students and researchers.