On November 20, 2012, Azim Sadikov, a Senior Economist from the IMF’s Resident Representative Office in Georgia, delivered a presentation of the IMF’s annual report on the “Caucasus and Central Asia [CCA] Regional Economic Outlook” to ISETers. The presentation covered an analysis of current and projected macroeconomic trends on both the global and CCA regional scale.
A long season of high-stakes elections in Georgia, Ukraine, and now the United States is finally over. Once the last campaign posters are taken down, we may as well start asking: now what?
As Harry S Truman once noted – “It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose your own”. While Georgia was able to grow its economy, this growth did not trickle all the way down.
The literature, typically using panel data covering many countries, shows that higher government turnover rates reduce growth significantly in both economic and statistical terms, even for established democracies.
Few elections in recent years were watched as carefully around the world as the Georgian parliamentary elections. And few political and economic observers shunned the opportunity to interpret its stunning outcome.