On May 17, Norberto Pignatti, the head of the Energy and Environment Policy Research Center and professor at the International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University, was invited to discuss good and bad practices characterizing the Regulatory Impact Assessment exercises in its presentation “Conducting RIA in Georgia: an academic perspective”.

In the middle of December, food prices maintained an upward trend, as ISET’s Retail Food Price Index increased by 2.2%, compared to mid-November 2017. It turns out that the holidays will cost more in 2017, compared to December 2016, as we recorded a significant 10.9% y/y increase in food prices.

When my mom was at my age (twenty-four), she already had a ring on her finger, a family, two kids, and a very clear idea about her life. I am not yet married, but I have already made at least one very important decision in my life – to become an economist. I made this fateful decision at 22, having tried myself in a banking job (that I hated). Many of my friends, however, are stuck with the educational and professional choices they have made very early in the lives, before knowing who they are and what they could possibly achieve.

On the 25th of May, ISET was pleased to host the environmental economist and founder of the consultancy company GIST Advisory, Pavan Sukhdev, for a presentation. Starting his career as a physicist, Mr. Sukhdev got interested in the challenges of environmental protection. This led him to investigate economics, particularly aiming at understanding the significance of businesses as a driver of the changes that we see around us as well as third-party impacts, which are known as externalities in economics.

On May 21-23, ISET-PI researcher Davit Keshelava participated in the annual European Newspaper Congress in Vienna, Austria. The congress was entitled “Optimistic Journalism Thinkers and Facebook Criticism”, and focused on the main opportunities and challenges of the 'daily newspaper' medium, but the topics were much broader than the title suggested.