A decade after its founding, ISET celebrates its entry among the top 10% economic institutions worldwide doing research on CIS countries. In November 2018 IDEAS ranked ISET the 142nd place out of the 1448 economic institutions in its database doing research on CIS countries. IDEAS is an international database that monitors publications in all fields of economics and ranks economic institutions around the world according to the visibility of their research i.e. how many times their online articles are viewed and downloaded.

Blockchain technology became a huge story last year due to the hype over cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Etherium. Banks and other financial institutions are rushing to adopt blockchain technology. Nowadays, about 15% of financial institutions use blockchain technology to secure and validate transactions. IBM was one of the first companies that saw the potential of blockchain use and encouraged startups related to the concept.

ISET was honored to host a third delegation representing the long-time partner, the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen. A four-day program included anti-corruption seminars, public discussions, and site visits to relevant public institutions and businesses.

Why go small when you can go big in committing your multilateral development institute to concur with climate change? This is the exact intent of nine presidents of major financial institutions, amongst them the African Development Bank, the World Bank Group, the New Development Bank, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Just recently, a rare occurrence made the headlines in Georgia: Moody’s Investors Service upgraded the government of Georgia’s local and foreign currency issuer ratings first time in seven years, to Ba2 from Ba3, with commentary that the outlook remains stable. This news was met with great excitement, but was soon overshadowed by the unfortunate news of Georgia’s downgrade on the Global Competitiveness Indicators, without fully appreciating or understanding the significance of the Moody's upgrade.