On January 22, Dr. David Ubilava, from the University of Sydney, led a seminar on the subject of his recent paper, "Rises and Falls in Primary Commodity Prices: Blame it on ENSO or Leave Them, Kids, Alone?"

Since October 2014, ISET has been regularly collecting and delivering scrap paper to Makuliteratura. Established in 2012, Makuliteratura is an organization that collects waste paper (old books, papers, magazines, and newspapers) and exchanges the waste paper it receives for new books.

According to the latest GEOSTAT figures, merchandize exports from Georgia decreased by 1.63% between 2013 and 2014. This is certainly not great news for the country, but does it imply that Georgian goods have become less competitive on the world market? Recent trade data suggest that this is not necessarily the case.

During the last three months, the Agricultural Policy Research Center (APRC) of ISET-PI was working on a study about family farming in Georgia. Within this project, we conducted interviews with farmers and owners of agribusinesses. These interviews elicited many intriguing facets of Georgian agriculture, but one aspect I found particularly interesting was that Georgian farmers apparently have a rather negative view on agricultural jobs.

The average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian Khachapuri reached 3.68 GEL in December 2014. The price jumped up by 9.5 % month-on-month (compared to November 2014) and by 2.4% year-on-year (compared to December 2013).