The Georgian Business Confidence Index (BCI) continues to improve. Unlike last quarter, the second-quarter increase in the index was mostly driven by a significant improvement in performance rather than in business expectations, which kept rising albeit at a marginal pace.

On June 15, 2016, ISET held a press conference to discuss recent economic indicators of Georgia. In the second quarter of 2016, the two most important economic barometers of consumer and business sentiment in Georgia – the Business Confidence Index (BCI) and the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) continued to steadily improve.

On Monday, June 13, ISET hosted Miranda Svanidze, an ISET graduate and current Ph.D. student of Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Development in Transition Countries (IAMO). She gave a presentation entitled “Spatial Integration of Wheat Markets in the South Caucasus and Central Asia”.

As argued by Omer Moav and Zvika Neeman in a 2012 paper (Moav taught at ISET in the past), boasting is a way to pretend that one has hidden income (“Saving Rates and Poverty: The Role of Conspicuous Consumption and Human Capital”, Economic Journal 122, pp. 933-956). While people may have a rough idea of the incomes of their neighbors, colleagues, friends, and other people they interact with, they usually do not know exactly how much they make.

On June 10, in cooperation with G4G USAID, ISET Policy Institute completed a 3-day workshop on Competition Policy. Eleven participants from the State Competition Agency, the Taxpayers Union (TPU), Georgian Lawyers for Independent Professions (GLIP), and ISET all attended the event.