Our latest online presentation highlighted women’s rights in Georgia and crucially considered their role in employment, childcare, and within society. ISET began research on our latest regulatory impact assessment (RIA) in 2019 and concluded at the end of last year, the subject brought to light many significant points relating to female economic empowerment and parental leave.

ISET’s director recently participated in the EU Stronger Together Conference, centered on the EaP Neighbourhood: Promoting the Clean Energy Transition in Eastern Partnership Countries. The conference, highlighting the key achievements and goals under clean energy initiatives, was hosted by the European Commission, the EU Delegation to Eastern Partnership Countries, Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER), Energy Community Secretariat (EnC), and International Energy Agency (IEA).

Under ISET affiliation Luc Leruth, the Lead Economist in the Policy Institute’s Governance and Social Policy Research Center, has recently been appointed a co-editor of The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal Economics. As a new form of the academic journal, the publication incorporates a large research community with an open and innovative peer review process; where critically the research is seen as a cooperative enterprise between authors, editors, referees, and readers.

We’re thrilled to announce that ISET’s Policy Institute has reached its tenth anniversary and alongside our celebrations, our lead economists and researchers have presented a newly developed Gender Equality Index at an international conference.

We were thrilled to see Salome Gelashvili, head of the ISET-PI Agricultural Policy Research Center (APRC), actively participate in a UNDP Georgia online discussion. During the virtual roundtable (entitled Local Economic Development and Business Friendly Environment for Municipalities), a variety of notable international speakers, particularly utilizing Czech expertise, came together to consider business development, combatting the rural-urban divide, and the effect of COVID-19 on the informal sector.