Cuba’s Fidel Castro once famously said about his country: “Even our prostitutes have university degrees”. While we don’t know about prostitutes, something similar could be said about Georgia. Virtually all Georgians have university degrees, and, as every frequent user of taxi services knows, there are Georgian taxi drivers who have two of them.

Until very recently Russia was considered by many foreign companies a somewhat difficult but promising country for investment, a “land of opportunity” that perhaps necessarily came with a hefty dose of a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma”. The difficulty was stemming primarily from Russia’s heavy-handed bureaucracy. Stories of corrupt practices, politically motivated court decisions, and questionable tax authorities’ tactics abounded.

These are Georgian churchkhela, a kind of national candy made from a string of walnut halves dipped in grape juice thickened with flour (Tatara or Phelamushi) and dried in the sun. There are essentially 2-3 kinds of Churchkhela. Somebody may be better in making them, somebody worse, but all in all, it is the same stuff sold all over Georgia.

A few weeks ago, the Israeli ambassador His Excellency Yuval Fuchs delivered a speech at ISET, explaining the amazing transformation of Israel from what essentially was an agricultural state into what many economists call a knowledge economy. The ambassador reported that in his youth the foremost product Israel was known for were oranges. In the last thirty years, however, Israel created a high-tech sector that can compete (and in many aspects surpasses) the high-tech industries of the United States and Europe.

One of the few economists who won the Nobel Peace Prize is Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi who invented the concept of microcredits. What is it about?