Please have a look at the above photo of the beautiful Kura River with the Sameba Cathedral in the background. Now, contemplate the picture for another 10 seconds and ask whether something suspicious is part of the scenario.

One thing few visitors to Tbilisi fail to notice is the rich and layered architectural heritage of the city. There are medieval churches in Old Tbilisi. There are art nouveau buildings in Sololaki.

While the cost of producing a film has indeed gone down and the world film market is indeed more open than ever, there is still an insurmountable obstacle in the way. The film industry is characterized by positive externalities, that is, the more films a country is producing, the easier it is to produce a film.

Classical production theory knows three so-called “production factors”: labor, capital, and land. One needs a certain amount of each of these factors in order to set up a production of whatever good. Then, in the 20th century, it became common to not count land as a separate production factor anymore.

Recently, I attended a show by the famous Erisioni dancing group, which was performing in Georgia for the first time after two years of constant traveling abroad. The Georgian dancers in traditional costumes were sensational, but as an economist, a minor incident caught my attention nearly as much as the Erisioni ensemble.