14
March
2016
We first met Gogi Elanidze in winter 2015, when interviewing farmers in Rati’s village, Kvemo Alvani. Located in Akhmeta municipality, Kvemo Alvani and its twin, Zemo Alvani, are not your usual Kakhetian villages. The two serve as the winter base for the people of Tusheti, an isolated valley separated from Kakheti by the 3000m high Abano mountain pass.
14
March
2016
Based on February data from three open bazaars in Tbilisi, the average cost of cooking one standard portion of Imeretian khachapuri stood at GEL3.47. Someone opting for the convenience of shopping in one of Tbilisi’s major supermarket chains, such as Carrefour, Fresco, Spar, or Goodwill, paid 4.40GEL (representing a premium of about 28%) for cooking exactly the same khachapuri.
07
March
2016
Using the panel data on the German and Ukrainian labor markets, Prof. Pignatti and his co-authors Thomas Dohmen (University of Bonn, Maastricht University, IZA and DIW, Berlin) and Hartmut Lehmann (University of Bologna, IZA and DIW, Berlin) show that risk attitudes have permanent (exogenous) determinants that are valid at different stages of economic development and in different structural contexts.
07
March
2016
In February 2016, the average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian khachapuri declined to 3.44 GEL, which is 4.3% lower month-on-month (that is compared to January 2016), and 4.7% higher year-on-year (compared to February 2015).
07
March
2016
I was 13 when my family took the fateful decision to make ‘Aliyah’ to Israel back in 1977. ‘Aliyah’ (the act of going up in Hebrew) is a nice term describing Jewish ‘repatriation’ from the Diaspora (St. Petersburg, in my case) to the Holy Land. Etymologically, ‘Aliya’ originates in the ancient Israelite tradition of annual ‘pilgrimage tours’ to Jerusalem (situated almost 1km above sea level).