The National Competitiveness Report (NCR) for Georgia aims to complement the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report by providing an in-depth and comprehensive treatment of competitiveness issues. In particular, it will explore the potential for Georgia to leverage its geographic location and business environment to assume the role of a hub economy in the greater Caucasus region. The overall aim of the project was to generate the first National Competitiveness Report (NCR) for Georgia, following the World Economic Forum's methodology.

Another Friday – and a slightly overdue post with the news from all around the econoblog-world. Some of my favorite bloggers seem to have taken a hiatus – hence the somewhat short post today.

Another perspective on whether to build a new city or not: in some papers land scarcity is seen as a factor that stimulates urbanization and industrialization.

Georgia’s growth performance since independence has gone through extremes, from an unprecedented -44.9 percent in 1992 to 12.3 percent in 2007. Although growth rates temporarily fell in the aftermath of the Russian-Georgian war and the world financial crisis they have since then recovered to 7 percent in 2011

This research paper by Tony Venables has some interesting implications for the South Caucasus.