For some years, Azerbaijan experiences an immigration wave. Chart 1 shows the net immigration (immigration minus emigration) to Azerbaijan during the last 22 years. As can be seen, every year since 2008 more people are immigrating to Azerbaijan than there are emigrating. In 2012, for instance, 2000 net migrants came to Azerbaijan.
Baku today is very different from the Baku of my high school years. I remember riding a tram to school. I also remember my high school sharing a building with a vocational school. Nowadays, you will find neither trams nor well-functioning vocational schools in Baku.
It is a commonly accepted view that corruption is bad for economic growth. It leads to an inefficient allocation of resources by contradicting the rules of fair competition and by setting wrong incentives.
Wages and productivity levels differ across countries. For instance, in 2011 the average yearly income in the US was about $53 000, whilst the same indicator was $250 in Madagascar.
ISET-PI was contracted by the German International Cooperation Agency (GIZ) to build the capacity of policymaking agencies and the NGO community in Azerbaijan to develop macroeconomic indices for their own needs.