14 years ago, the American educationalists Valerie E. Lee and David Burkham published a highly noticed and controversial study titled “Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School” (Economic Policy Institute 2002). The authors work with a sample of 16,000 children who entered US kindergartens in 1998 and 1999 and who had taken the ECLS-K entry test, measuring children’s basic reading and mathematical skills.

A dramatic y/y decline (44%) in Georgia’s 2015 exports to Armenia was the subject of a study by ISET-PI and the German Economic Team (GET). Our goal was to understand the extent to which this slump resulted from Armenia’s agreement to join the Eurasian Economic Union in 2014 (as part of this agreement, Armenia applied new trade barriers on imports from non-EEU countries in 2015).

On April 21, ISET hosted a public lecture by Tornike Kadeishvili, a resident professor and the head of the Scientific Board of the Andrea Razmadze Mathematical Institute. Professor Kadeishvili spoke about unexpected uses of mathematics in different fields of study, as well as how it can be applied to our everyday lives.

On 21 April 2016, ISET hosted Maria De Paola from the University of Calabria, who presented a paper by Vincenzo Scoppa and De Paola herself, entitled 'Procrastination, Academic Success and the Effectiveness of a Remedial Program'.

According to GeoStat estimates, real GDP grew by 2.6% year over year in February 2016. This growth rate is an improvement over the 0.8% growth observed in the previous months. Still, in order to reach the predicted quarterly 2.9% growth (the ISET-PI forecast for Q1 real growth), the economy would have to have expanded by at least 5.4% in March. While the actual growth for March is likely to be lower than that figure, the increases in the consumer and business confidence indices (CCI, BCI) in the last month can be interpreted as good signs for the economy going forward.