That Georgia is making strident progress on a variety of international indices is widely reported in the domestic press, but many Georgians may still view claims of their country ranking highly on global lists of safety and economic freedom with a degree of skepticism; after all, the average wage remains low, and there are few opportunities outside of the capital.

The close ties between ISET and the World Bank were reaffirmed once again on the 8th of May when a project supported by the Bank was unveiled at an event in the institute’s conference hall.

In preparation for the COP24 climate change conference in Poland, in December 2018, researchers published a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlining how significant the consequences of climate change would be following a global increase in temperature of just a half degree, from 1.5 to 2 degrees C. In the wake of the newly released IPCC report, alongside William Nordhaus’ Nobel Memorial award, this year’s winner in economics, a heated debate has surfaced.

In 2018, Georgian power plants generated 12 154 mln. kWh of electricity. This represents a 5% increase in total generation, compared to the previous year (in 2017, total generation was 11 531 mln. kWh) (Figure 1). The increase in generation on a yearly basis comes from increase in hydropower (9%), more than offsetting the decrease in thermal (-5%) and wind power generation (-4%).

It all started with a simple exercise for my Master’s project in which I tried to understand the underlying causes of the observed wage gap between ethnic Georgians and ethnic minorities in the country. After more than a decade, a reputable international journal has published a paper reporting on the experimental evidence my colleagues and I collected and analyzed on labor market outcomes for ethnic minority and female citizens of Georgia.