
“With the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), humanity has entered a new phase. The 4IR has become the lived reality for millions of people around the world, and is creating new opportunities for business, government and individuals” – Klaus Schwab, Founder, and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum.

This summer, Russia is again at the epicenter of the world, but this time for hosting the 21st FIFA World Cup football tournament and not for the occupation of its neighboring countries’ territories. The majority of the world’s population is gripped by football fever, and Georgians are no exception. You can see random people on the streets wearing the jersey of their favorite nation. Students attend classes wearing jerseys or football T-shirts.

The Khachapuri Index is one of the most popular Indexes in Georgia. ISET uses the Khachapuri Index as a simple tool that tracks inflation. The creation of the Khachapuri Index was inspired by the Big Mac Index, made and used by the Economist. ISET’s Khachapuri index uses a basket for calculating inflation that includes only those ingredients that are needed to cook one Imeretian khachapuri – flour, cheese, yeast, milk, eggs, and butter.

As a key finding in this year’s EPI-scoring, air quality keeps deteriorating human health in such a manner that it is considered as “…the leading environmental threat to public health” (EPI, 2018). The exposure of pollution and its particles from e.g. heavy traffic is a contributing factor. In Sweden, the transporting sector constitutes 1/3 of the total CO2 emissions.

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).