On 26-28 September 2016, an ENPARD study tour, involving ENPARD Georgia, ENPARD Moldova, and ENPARD Armenia, was organized by the EU Delegation to Armenia and the FAO Office in Yerevan. The European Neighborhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD) was launched in Georgia in 2013, in Armenia in 2014, and recently started operations in Moldova.

Already in ancient times, philosophers debated the nature of happiness and the recipes for a happy and fulfilling life. Today this question is also hotly debated by scientists and politicians, who are particularly interested in what can be done to increase the happiness of their voters (and citizens, more generally). Happiness has become so important nowadays that four countries: Bhutan, Ecuador, UAE, and Venezuela went so far as to employ ministers of happiness!

A dramatic y/y decline (44%) in Georgia’s 2015 exports to Armenia was the subject of a study by ISET-PI and the German Economic Team (GET). Our goal was to understand the extent to which this slump resulted from Armenia’s agreement to join the Eurasian Economic Union in 2014 (as part of this agreement, Armenia applied new trade barriers on imports from non-EEU countries in 2015).

On March 30-31 ISET-PI team took part in an interim research workshop conducted within the framework of a multi-country study “Good Jobs for Inclusive Growth in Central and West Asia” organized and financed by the Asian Development Bank. The goal of the study is to inform policy decisions aimed at promoting inclusive growth and reducing poverty and inequality in the countries of Central and West Asia (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, as well as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan).

Negotiation support systems (NSS) let computers be brokers in multidimensional and highly complex negotiation problems. In the last 20 years, platforms like Smartsettle and Inspire were used in thousands of serious negotiation cases around the world, many of which were successfully resolved.