On March 11, representatives of the Bern University of Applied Sciences, School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences (HAFL), Dominic Blaettler (Ph.D. Social Sciences, Professor of Rural Development and Innovation, BFH-HAFL) and Pia Fehle (MSc Agricultural Sciences, Research Associate, BFH-HAF) visited ISET in the framework of the HAFL-ISET/APRC initiative.

On January 29, ISET was pleased to host Prof. Michael Beenstock for a seminar workshop. Prof. Beenstock is the author of ten books on topics including time series and spatial econometrics, macroeconomics, the global economy, and economic development, as well as writing more than 100 refereed journal articles.

The European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development in Georgia (ENPARD Georgia) was implemented in March 2013. The main goal of the ENPARD program is to reduce rural poverty in Georgia.1 The total budget of the program is 102 million EUR.

This research aims to explain how Georgia’s economic development in the past 12-15 years took place despite the absence of rural-urban migration, defying the predictions of the Lewis Model - one of the most influential theories in development economics.

For several consecutive years, we have been observing a seasonal spike in Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) coinciding in time with young wine festivals (rtveli) and post-harvest euphoria in rural Georgia. Not this year. In September 2017, CCI lost 2.6 points, going down from -16.4 to -19. Both CCI components, the present situation, and expectations indices declined, by 3.4 and 1.9 points, respectively.