On Friday, February 13th, ISET hosted Dr. Jan Fidrmuc from Brunel University, who presented a paper he co-authored with Juan De Dios Tena titled “Friday the 13th: The Empirics of Bad Luck”.
The only one contributor to y/y deflation was the main component of the Khachapuri recipe - cheese (-13.8%) (see graph), while the prices of other components showed have increased: flour (+16.6%), milk (+5.4%), yeast (+7.6%), butter (+11.3%), and eggs (+1.3%).
The lari depreciation has started to affect real estate market prices in Tbilisi. The average rental price for residential property has continued to fall, reaching a new historical minimum in February 2015.
On February 12th, ISET hosted Dr. Andrea Ciani from Bocconi University, who presented his job market paper "Export Quality Upgrading under Credit Constraints".
On February 11th, ISET hosted Olivier Harlem, Ph.D. of the Erasmus School of Economics, Rotterdam. Dr. Harlem presented his job market paper, “Earmarks”. Earmarks were U.S. federal funds that are designated for local projects and were easy for local representatives to obtain for their electoral districts.