On February 5, 2014, ISET was pleased to host the German Ambassador to Georgia, H.E. Ortwin Hennig. The Ambassador gave a presentation about democracy and how a democratic country should execute internal and external politics.

For some years, Azerbaijan experiences an immigration wave. Chart 1 shows the net immigration (immigration minus emigration) to Azerbaijan during the last 22 years. As can be seen, every year since 2008 more people are immigrating to Azerbaijan than there are emigrating. In 2012, for instance, 2000 net migrants came to Azerbaijan.

On February 4, 2014, Daniel Levy, professor of economics at Bar Ilan University and Emory University and member of ISET’s International Faculty Committee, presented his paper “Asymmetric Price Adjustment in the Small", (that he co-authored with Haipeng Chen, Sourav Ray, and Marc Bergen) to ISET professors, students and researchers.

On January 30, 2014, ISET hosted Dr. Rognvaldur Hannesson from the Norwegian School of Economics. Dr. Hannesson gave a presentation on the somewhat unusual topic of Fisheries Economics.

The value of a currency, measured in terms of other currencies, has consequences for the real economy. A more expensive lari, for example, makes it more profitable to import goods into Georgia. The importer has to pay the foreign goods with foreign currency, and when the lari is more valuable, fewer lari is needed to pay for them.