The project provides findings and policy recommendation from a series of eight case studies documenting foreign direct investment in Georgia's agriculture and food processing industry, including grape and wine production, hazelnuts, poultry, cereals and medicinal herbs, pickled fruit and vegetables, as well as apple concentrate and aroma.

For many observers, the Georgian job market is a mystery. Companies are bitterly complaining about a lack of engineers, forcing them to withhold the expansion of production capacities and to cut down investments. Yet Georgian young people, who could make good fortunes by studying technical subjects, prefer to learn the law, business administration and the like, qualifications that are oversupplied in the market and on average do not yield high salaries.

While written in 1991, “The Development Frontier” by Peter Bauer has lost none of its relevance for Georgia and other predominantly agrarian economies of the 21st century. Economic development, suggests Bauer, “begins with the replacement of subsistence activities by production for sale.

As Stephen Dowling put it in his BBC News article a few years ago, “when it comes to crossing the road, there's no such thing as an international standard. Every country does it differently.” How people drive and cross the road, according to Dowling, is a matter of a country’s cultural values. Is it really?

As reported in our Khachapuri Index Column, the prices of key khachapuri ingredients have started rising in July, given their strong correlation with the annual cycle of agricultural production in Georgia.