I know. I know that I know. For as long as the human race existed, knowledge embodied power. In the life of a society, however, what becomes even more important is the fact that we share certain knowledge with fellow human beings, and that we, moreover, are aware of each other’s knowledge.

We all know how inventive (and sometimes devious) the human mind can be in inventing different kinds of mediums of exchange – which we simply call money. Everybody has heard of cigarettes or cowrie shells, used by people in different economic situations as a replacement for all so familiar gold coins or Ben Franklin portraits in green.

Last week, The Economist published a comparison of the costs of pancake ingredients across many countries of the world. The pancake recipe used for the calculations included flour, eggs, milk, and butter – all of which are also part of the Khachapuri Index regularly compiled by the ISET Policy Institute.

While it is unclear whether this project will ever be realized, it certainly shows that Azerbaijan has huge ambitions. Comparisons to Dubai come to mind, as a city with attention-grabbing architectural projects.

How much foreign wealth does a country really have? In the Balance of Payments Accounts, the net foreign wealth is essentially the difference between the assets held by the country’s residents abroad and the country’s liabilities to foreigners, valued at the market price in each given year.