ISET Policy Institute is an active member of the CAREC Think Tank Network. This year, the fifth CAREC Think Tank Development Forum, held on November 23-24, gathered leaders from the CAREC Institute, Asian Development Bank, other international organizations, leading regional think tanks, experts, alongside various academics to discuss economic corridors as drivers of fiscal growth and regional integration.

We live in a world where the production of a single good typically involves manufacturing inputs from many different countries around the globe. For example, a typical iPhone production takes place in as many as 7 countries, including the USA, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and even Switzerland. This is what is known to economists as global value chains (GVC). The emergence of GVC more than two decades ago transformed the way economists think about countries’ comparative advantage and specialization in production.

The advent of globalization in recent decades has had a profound impact on the development path of countries around the globe. The rapid development of ICT technologies coupled with global tendencies to reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers since WWII made possible economic integration between countries on the scale never imagined before.

On July 30-31, 2019 the International School of Economics (ISET) at Tbilisi State University hosted the 2-day workshops on economic integration in Asia and Europe sponsored by the CAREC Institute and the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), together with the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia.

South Caucasus Trade Study to identify a number of areas focusing on three thematic components: (i) Trade, export, investment, and private sector development measures, (ii) Border management, (iii) New developments in regional integration.