The National Competitiveness Report (NCR) for Georgia aims to complement the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report by providing an in-depth and comprehensive treatment of competitiveness issues. In particular, it will explore the potential for Georgia to leverage its geographic location and business environment to assume the role of a hub economy in the greater Caucasus region. The overall aim of the project was to generate the first National Competitiveness Report (NCR) for Georgia, following the World Economic Forum's methodology.

Another perspective on whether to build a new city or not: in some papers land scarcity is seen as a factor that stimulates urbanization and industrialization.

A recent blog post on tractor service stations generated an interesting discussion in the comment section.

One of the recurring themes of Soviet propaganda was the tractor. Think for example of the film “Zemlya” by Alexander Dovzhenko, which features the triumphant arrival of the first tractor in a village and leaves no doubt that communism is to thank.

End of the week –and a fresh serving of interesting links from economist bloggers and blogging economists. 1.  Joe Weisenthal from the Business Insider tells us how Ben Bernanke murdered the gold standard – and good riddance too! 2.  Nice infographics from Turbotax on the history of taxes in the US. 3.  Econbrowser discusses the prospects of the Eurozone crisis. 4.  Michael Sandel talks about market thinking from an unusual point of view. Quite illuminating, in a way. 5.  The Free Exchange blog explains (or tries to explain) several of America’s macro puzzles. As usual, excellent read. 6.  Noahpinion talks about an interesting model of asset bubbles. 7.  A very nice piece on heterogeneity from the Minneapolis Fed. 8.  Some stabs in the back of libertarianism from Noahpinion again. Couldn’t agree more, really. 9.  Witty counterfactual from our old friend, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative. 10. And from him again, something useful for those who like myself teach macro – problems with teaching SRAS shocks