Georgia is a favorable investment destination, with a simple tax code consisting of six flat taxes and a total tax rate of only 16% on commercial profits that are distributed. Georgia was ranked 16th on the World Banks Ease of Doing Business for 2017 (by contrast, Switzerland is No. 31 and Norway No. 6), and No. 13 on the Bribery Risk Scale of the “Trace”, an International Transparency Rank (Switzerland is No. 16 and Norway No. 5). Georgia has signed an Association Agreement with the EU, is a member of WHO, has ratified the Energy Charter Treaty, and signed the New York Convention.

This year’s ISET’s Summer School was composed of a series of lectures, talks by prominent speakers, and debates on the subject of reforms.

On July 7-8, 2017 ISET hosted the 10th edition of the Workshop on the Economics of Advertising and Marketing, supported by the Labex MME-DII research project of the University of Cergy-Pontoise.

So far, 2017 has proved to be an exceptional year for ISET and its community. The school released its 10th cohort of well-educated and professional economists, with 32 students from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia joining the small but very strong community of ISETers.

ISET continues its student policy paper seminar series for the institute's (now graduated) second-year students. This time, Tatia Sosiashvili, Megi Tsikoridze, Nino Aladashvili, and Sopo Basilidze presented their joint paper on tax administration in Georgia. Their project, entitled “Current Challenges in Tax Administration (VAT)”, was supervised by Eric Livny, President of ISET and the ISET Policy Institute, and Sophiko Skhirtladze, an ISET Resident Faculty member and head of the Private Sector Development Policy Research Center.