On March 4, 2013, Andrew Burns, Manager of Global Macroeconomics in the Development Prospects Group of the World Bank, presented a report – “Global Economic Prospects – Assuring Growth Over Medium Term”, for ISETers.

Consider yourself in Germany in 1923, entering a bar for drinking a beer. How much would you have had to pay for that? Well, the average price for a glass of beer in the autumn of 1923 was four billion Marks.

Georgia’s current rank in the ease of “hiring and firing practices” and “redundancy costs” (weeks of salary an employer is required to pay a dismissed worker) is 9th and 13th, respectively (World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, 2012-13).

On February 22, 2013, Professor Michele Bernasconi (Università “CàFoscari”, Venice, Italy) presented his paper “Tax Evasion: Does fiscal pressure matter? Lessons from the behavioral economics”, which was co-authored by Luca Corazzini and Raffaello Seri, to ISET students, researchers, and faculty.

The ability of families to meet their most basic needs is an important measure for the development of a country. Poverty touches on questions of human dignity and fairness in society, but beyond that, poverty causes problems that may impair long-run economic prospects, like crime, social unrest, and underinvestment in human capital.