On Thursday, April 16th, Muhammad Asali, ISET’s resident faculty member, presented his paper, named “Compulsory Military Service and Future Earnings: Evidence from a Quasi Experiment” to the ISET community.

Georgian reforms have become an internationally traded commodity. Underappreciated and no longer wanted at home, some of Georgia’s former reformers are doing well-paid consulting gigs in Mongolia, Central Asia, Ukraine, Moldova, and further away emerging markets. Sensing a business opportunity, a group of former government officials groomed by Kakha Bendukidze, the mastermind of Georgian reforms, has recently established a consulting agency, “Reformatics”.

On Wednesday, April 15th, ISET hosted Archil Kbilashvili, former Prosecutor General of Georgia, currently a Partner of Mgaloblishvili-Kipiani-Dzidziguri (MKD) law firm. Mr. Kbilashvili delivered a presentation regarding the principles of law and order to the ISET community.

According to Geostat’s rapid estimates, real GDP increased by 4.9% in February. This comes as welcome news after several consecutive months of low and, at times (November 2014), negative growth. ISET’s GDP forecast predicts 0.5% GDP growth in the first quarter of 2015. However, this is likely an underestimation of the true outcome, as the economy has already partially adjusted to the external shocks that were the main drivers of the slowdown.

After being steadily optimistic for most of 2014 and in the first quarter of 2015, Georgia’s business confidence dropped by 24.5 points to an all-time low level of 3.6 on a scale of [-100; 100] points. The survey, which included 168 firms, suggests that business confidence declined on all measures, across all sectors, and for all firm sizes. Moreover, it is reflected in business perceptions concerning both current performance and expectations concerning the future.