Khachapuri index kept declining in March with the average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian Khachapuri reaching 3.15 GEL. This is 7% lower month-on-month (compared to February 2015), and 3.1% lower year-on-year (compared to March 2014).

While Georgia never faced anything like a wartime food crisis, the agricultural policies implemented by the Georgian Dream coalition government in 2013-2015 did not lack in ambition, seeking to make up for more than a decade of “active neglect” of Georgia’s smallholder agriculture by the Saakashvili administration. In this piece, we take a critical look at one of the first government initiatives, the Agricultural Card Program, introduced in February 2013.

On Thursday, March 26th, Dr. Nani Macharashvili, from TSU delivered a lecture in which she touched on the importance of the deliberative model of public policymaking.

“Shock and awe” is a US military term describing the use of overwhelming power to demoralize the enemy, as applied by the American military in Iraq. “Shock and awe” would also aptly describe my emotional state when I entered, at the age of 23, the magnificent reading room at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This was the moment when I – a former paratrooper and an officer with one of Israel’s security services – understood how badly I want to acquire an education. Not technical knowledge or skills, but an education.

On Friday, March 20th, in the conference hall of ISET, Jan Fidrmuc from Brunel University gave a presentation titled "How Persistent Is Social Capital?”. At the beginning of the presentation, he has defined Social Capital (SK) as one of the factors of production which encourages cooperation and helps to overcome free-riding.