At ISET we teach graduate economics, which uses the mathematical language to analyze economic behavior (“microeconomics”) and macroeconomic systems. Being based in Tbilisi, we heavily depend on “upstream” Georgian educational institutions, such as schools and undergraduate departments at TSU and elsewhere.

The average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian Khachapuri in March 2014 was 3.06 GEL, which is 7% lower month-on-month (m/m, that is compared to the previous month), and 3.1 year-on-year (y/y, that is compared to the same month of last year). For foreign currency earners, Khachapuri became even cheaper due to the depreciation of Georgian currency against USD and Euro.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union it was believed that tourism might become one of Georgia’s “locomotive” sectors. While the Shevardnadze government failed to develop this potential, after the Rose Revolution, tourism became a top priority. Each year since 2005, the direct effect of tourism (i.e. the money spent by tourists) alone has contributed 6-7% of Georgia’s total GDP.

There are clear expectations in many cultures to marry somebody from their own group, and not living up to these expectations will at least cause a loss in reputation. This is nicely displayed in the movie Late Marriage by Dover Kosashvili, humorously depicting a young Georgian Jew in Israel whose parents want him to marry the “right” woman (the movie features extensive dialogues in Judeao-Georgian, another endangered language).

As often discussed on this page, the seasonal dynamics of the Khachapuri Index are mainly driven by extremely sharp fluctuations in the supply of fresh milk, which directly affects the prices of traditional dairy products such as Imeretian cheese. However, these seasonal fluctuations in the price of cheese are consistently sharper in Kutaisi than anywhere else in Georgia.