Like many, I like having more choices but hate making choices. As a result, many of the most important choices in my life, including the choice among alternative partners, have been made for me by … others.

For many observers, the Georgian job market is a mystery. Companies are bitterly complaining about a lack of engineers, forcing them to withhold the expansion of production capacities and to cut down investments. Yet Georgian young people, who could make good fortunes by studying technical subjects, prefer to learn the law, business administration and the like, qualifications that are oversupplied in the market and on average do not yield high salaries.

One or two years ago, a Lavazza’s take-away coffee shop opened on the side of Georgia’s east-west highway in the area of Zestaponi. You always could find plenty of coffee shops in Tbilisi, but it was a novelty to have them next to the highway. Soon afterward, another coffee bar opened along the road, and surprisingly, it was again set up close to Zestaponi.

Chiatura is a small but resource-rich and picturesque town, situated in the province of Imereti in Western Georgia. The abundance of an important natural resource, manganese ore, was the main reason for establishing the town in 1879. Akaki Tsereteli, the famous Georgian writer from the same region, initiated manganese mining back then.

Everyone using the service of the Tbilisi marshrutkas experiences one of two extreme cases: the marshrutka either moves tantalizingly slowly or excessively fast. How can this apparent paradox be explained? In search of an answer, let us turn to game theory, one of the appealings outgrows of mathematical economics.