The Debt Management Specialist’s initial focus was an assessment of the public debt management legal environment, institutional coordination and arrangements, public debt management initiatives and capacity, public debt portfolio composition, and macroeconomic condition in Georgia. This report provides a general overview of these fore mentioned components.

The objective of this study was to assess the economy wide indirect benefits of investments in the East West Highway (EWH). This study has used a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, which simulates indirect benefits associated with the completion of the upgraded road corridor.

Yerevan is presently rife with protest. Dubbed “Electric Yerevan,” the protests are aptly named considering that they began as a result of Armenia’s government succumbing to demands by the country’s electricity distribution monopoly (Electric Network of Armenia (ENA)) to raise regulated tariffs by 16.7% as of 1 August 2015.

When offered the ISET director job back in March 2007, I did not think twice. Everything I’ve read about Georgia until then was incredibly positive. Livable, hospitable, beautiful, corruption-free, etc., etc. The latter part sounded particularly promising given that during my last days in Moscow (I lived and worked in Moscow from 1993 till 2007) I had my brand new BMW motorbike stolen in broad daylight by a local police officer (sic!) who knew that I am about to leave the country and probably thought that there would be no use for motorbikes on Georgia’s terrible roads.

According to a recent study, smoking marijuana for many years leads to a severe loss of intelligence: compared with people who did not consume cannabis, the IQ’s of smokers were lower by 13-38 points (Meier et al.: “Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife”, PNAS 109, 2012). Moreover, after a long time of consumption, cognitive abilities and memory do not recover when smoking marijuana is eventually given up.