ISET has started a Lecture Series of TSU’s Distinguished Professors. Once a month, ISET will host notable TSU professors from various faculties who will deliver a one-hour presentation for ISETers.

About 9 months ago, we were already discussing the oddities of egg prices in Georgia (“The Georgian Egg of Discord”, by Giorgi Kelbakiani and Eric Livny). At that time, huge volatility in egg prices could be explained by interesting political dynamics. Under the UNM government, local producers of eggs were largely protected from external competition through non-tariff import barriers, called by the ministry of agriculture a “complete violation of law and international agreements”.

Any Georgian growing up in the “dark” 1990s (a literally dark, and rather gloomy period in the recent history of our country) would remember the canned milk powder distributed, together with some other goodies, to families with children aged below 5. These black and white cans were often used as flower pots in many of these families…

Assume you want to buy tomatoes at a vegetable market in Tbilisi. At a booth, you see beautiful tomatoes of flawless quality, red, fleshy, and shiny. Right next to them are offered semi-rotten tomatoes with corky blotches, but to your surprise, both kinds of tomatoes are tagged with the very same price. “Something wrong with this seller”, you may think and buy the shiny tomatoes.

In September, sale prices for residential properties in Tbilisi declined significantly compared to the previous year (-8.6 %). In terms of area, Old Tbilisi continues to lead the price index, at 1,143 USD per m2 in September.