28
February
2014
Assuring access to modern energy services for the whole population is a crucial step to improve human well-being and stimulate economic and social development. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has identified the lack of access to modern energy services as one of the main obstacles to overcome in order to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. In its 2011 World Energy Outlook, the IEA argued forcefully about the need to find and mobilize the resources required to extend access to modern energy services to the poor around the world.
10
February
2014
Over the winter holidays, I had the leisure to read the book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James A. Robinson (Crown Business 2012, 544 pages, Hardcover $20.00). Both authors are very eminent – one would not be surprised if Acemoglu, a Turkish-born Armenian and the most frequently cited contemporary economist, would receive the Nobel Prize in economics somewhere down the road.
30
January
2014
This project aims to support the development of business-oriented small farmer groups (e.g., agricultural cooperatives) with the goals of increasing agricultural productivity and reducing rural poverty in Georgia.
24
January
2014
Economics Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, well-known for sharply criticizing the conventional wisdom of development economics, once summed up his views in a rhetorical question: “We have felt the pain, when do we get the gain?”
17
January
2014
When I think about the lack of human capital in Georgian agriculture, I am reminded of the 1997 Georgian movie “The Turtle Doves of Paradise”, directed by Goderdzi Chokheli. In a Soviet village, an ex-priest decides to teach basic knowledge to old peasants. He wants them to learn to read, write, and elementary calculations skills.
