On February 19, 2014, ISET hosted a round table meeting on the World Bank’s draft of its Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) with Georgia for the FY 2014-2017. The purpose of the consultation meeting was to receive critical feedback from think tanks on the CPS to help determine the most effective country partnership strategy.

Georgian households, being as poor as they are, don't save enough for the rainy day. Do low savings imply that Georgians are impatient to consume and do not care about their future? Is it in our genes that we prefer today’s egg to tomorrow’s chicken? Maybe our history, the history of a small nation struggling for survival, taught us to live our lives one day at a time?

How significant is welfare loss in the presence of cartels? How best to fight against cartels to avoid them ex-ante? These were the leading questions of the presentation of Dr. Andrea Mantovani (University of Bologna) at ISET on February 20, 2014.

The consultancy aimed to identify training programs that addresses actual labor market demand and devise an algorithm for matching the unemployed with these programs taking account of their skills, work experience and motivation. As part of this project, ISET-PI aimed to identify vocational training programs that address actual labor market demand, and devise an algorithm to assign registered unemployed to these programs (taking account of their skills, work experience and motivation).

On February 18, 2014, ISET hosted the Israeli Ambassador to Georgia, H.E. Yuval Fuchs. The ambassador gave a great presentation about the miracle of Israel as a start-up nation.