Starting from 2005, Georgia saw a rapid decline in tertiary gross enrollment. This project outlines the potential reasons behind decreasing enrollment rates and discusses the role of institutional changes, wages, returns to education, external and international migration, and employment patterns.

On Friday, February 20th, Jules Hugot from Sciences Po (Paris) gave a presentation of his job market paper "Trade Costs and the Two Globalizations: 1827-2012".

On February 19th, ISET hosted Lasha Chochua from the University of Bielefeld. Mr. Chochua presented the preliminary version of his paper "Endogenous Trade Policy in the Presence of Lobbying and Heterogeneously Ignorant Voters" coauthored with George Papava from the University of Chicago.

On February 18, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) lead economist for Central Asia and Georgia, Agris Preimanis, delivered two presentations at ISET titled: 1) “Oil-driven Russia downturn adds to weakness in EBRD economies” and 2) “Innovation in Transition”.

In January, the average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian khachapuri fell to 3.40GEL. The Index lost 7% month-on-month (compared to December 2014) and 5.4 % year-on-year (compared to January 2014).