24
April
2016
14 years ago, the American educationalists Valerie E. Lee and David Burkham published a highly noticed and controversial study titled “Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School” (Economic Policy Institute 2002). The authors work with a sample of 16,000 children who entered US kindergartens in 1998 and 1999 and who had taken the ECLS-K entry test, measuring children’s basic reading and mathematical skills.
22
April
2016
A dramatic y/y decline (44%) in Georgia’s 2015 exports to Armenia was the subject of a study by ISET-PI and the German Economic Team (GET). Our goal was to understand the extent to which this slump resulted from Armenia’s agreement to join the Eurasian Economic Union in 2014 (as part of this agreement, Armenia applied new trade barriers on imports from non-EEU countries in 2015).
20
April
2016
According to GeoStat estimates, real GDP grew by 2.6% year over year in February 2016. This growth rate is an improvement over the 0.8% growth observed in the previous months. Still, in order to reach the predicted quarterly 2.9% growth (the ISET-PI forecast for Q1 real growth), the economy would have to have expanded by at least 5.4% in March. While the actual growth for March is likely to be lower than that figure, the increases in the consumer and business confidence indices (CCI, BCI) in the last month can be interpreted as good signs for the economy going forward.
20
April
2016
Georgia's education system seems to be broken. It is no longer corrupt, which is good, but it does not deliver the quality that we all want and need. Our teachers are among the lowest paid in Georgia and in the world. Quality is an issue at all levels of education, starting with preschools and ending with graduate and post-graduate education.
19
April
2016
On 18 April 2016 ISET hosted Dr. Donghyun Park, a principal economist with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), who presented his team’s research: the Impact of China’s Slowdown on the World Economy. The talk was attended by ISET students and faculty, as well as representatives of Georgia’s leading businesses and business associations.
