For the likes of Boris Johnson, currently UK’s most popular politician and a leading figure of the Brexit revolt, “The European Union has become too remote, too opaque and not accountable enough to the people it is meant to serve.” But how about the UK itself? How close are 10 Downing Street or Westminster to the working-class folks of England’s industrial north? How representative is Britain’s Eton-educated ‘political class’ of the people they are meant to serve?

The relevance of agriculture in formal employment dropped in many European, Central, and East Asian countries over the previous decades. The mutually reinforcing and interdependent processes of development outside the agricultural sector, along with significant urbanization, have resulted in new dynamics and diversity in the rural labor landscape. Remittances, as the link between urban and international migrants and their original households, have gained importance in sustaining rural livelihoods, especially in poorer countries and regions.

After a group of economics students and professors from UNIL visited Tbilisi earlier this year and undertook a course in Mechanism Design taught by ISET’s senior academic advisor, Professor Motty Perry (University of Warwick), a delegation consisting of ISET professor Florian Biermann, three second-year students (Mzia Giorgadze, Gela Gelashvili, Laura Manukyan) and two ISET alumni (Saba Devdariani and Aram Grigorian) paid a return visit to Switzerland.

Early next month, the eyes of the world will briefly turn to Switzerland. On June 5th, the citizens of this prosperous country will vote in an unprecedented referendum on the idea of guaranteeing each citizen a basic income equivalent to roughly 30,000 USD per year.

ISET is proud to congratulate Salome Baslandze, an ISET graduate of 2011, on her recent appointment as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF) in Rome.