06
December
2013
One or two years ago, a Lavazza’s take-away coffee shop opened on the side of Georgia’s east-west highway in the area of Zestaponi. You always could find plenty of coffee shops in Tbilisi, but it was a novelty to have them next to the highway. Soon afterward, another coffee bar opened along the road, and surprisingly, it was again set up close to Zestaponi.
02
December
2013
In the 1930s, the American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf put forward the hypothesis that people of different mother tongues perceive the world differently. According to linguistic relativity or Whorfianism, both the grammatical structure and the vocabulary of a language influence the way how people think.
04
November
2013
Most of us take as a given the necessity of strong property rights protection. It is hard to imagine economies that could flourish and develop if the security of persons and property conditions are not met.
30
September
2013
Evacuation is one of the most frequently used words in Georgian TV in the last two weeks, arguably due to an inflation of fibber bomb warnings. Rustavi 2, Imedi, Parliament, airport, bank offices, and schools – all were targeted by these macabre hoaxes.
27
September
2013
In the very first class on the Principles of Economics, we teach our students how beneficial trade is. We explain that voluntary exchange (trade) increases overall welfare and is mutually beneficial. Economists tend to regard this basic “principle of economics” as an axiom, providing the basis for many other principles of economics and, most importantly, the notion (or fallacy) that “the markets know best”…
