About 9 months ago, we were already discussing the oddities of egg prices in Georgia (“The Georgian Egg of Discord”, by Giorgi Kelbakiani and Eric Livny). At that time, huge volatility in egg prices could be explained by interesting political dynamics. Under the UNM government, local producers of eggs were largely protected from external competition through non-tariff import barriers, called by the ministry of agriculture a “complete violation of law and international agreements”.

Assume you want to buy tomatoes at a vegetable market in Tbilisi. At a booth, you see beautiful tomatoes of flawless quality, red, fleshy, and shiny. Right next to them are offered semi-rotten tomatoes with corky blotches, but to your surprise, both kinds of tomatoes are tagged with the very same price. “Something wrong with this seller”, you may think and buy the shiny tomatoes.

On May 23, 2014, ISET hosted a presentation by Dr. Ira Gang from Rutgers University, who presented his paper titled: “Is women’s ownership of land a panacea in developing countries? evidence from land-owning farm households in Malawi”.

On May 2, 2014, the Georgian parliament unanimously passed the law on the elimination of any form of discrimination. The stated objective of the law is to ensure that any physical or legal entity equally benefits from all rights defined by Georgian legislation, irrespective of race, skin color, language, sex, citizenship, place of origin, birth or residence, wealth or class status, religion or belief, national, ethnic or social belonging, profession, marital or health status, disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, political or other considerations, etc.

On the 15th of March 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered a seminal speech to the congress, outlining the four rights that he considered essential for consumers: the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose, and the right to be heard. Ever since Kennedy’s speech, the idea of consumer protection blossomed both in theory and in practice. In this year, 52 years after Kennedy’s speech, Georgia will pass a new law on the protection of consumer rights.