On September 7, ISET hosted the president and executive chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, Dr. Yaron Brook, for a presentation. The topic of the presentation was Free Speech and The Battle for Western Culture. During the presentation, Dr. Brook explained why and in what ways free speech is under attack and why it is important to defend this fundamental right.

ISET continues its student policy paper seminar series for the institute's (now graduated) second-year students. This time, Tatia Sosiashvili, Megi Tsikoridze, Nino Aladashvili, and Sopo Basilidze presented their joint paper on tax administration in Georgia. Their project, entitled “Current Challenges in Tax Administration (VAT)”, was supervised by Eric Livny, President of ISET and the ISET Policy Institute, and Sophiko Skhirtladze, an ISET Resident Faculty member and head of the Private Sector Development Policy Research Center.

Ulrich Koester, Professor of Agricultural Economics at Kiel University and IAMO Visiting Research Fellow paid a visit to ISET on May 30. During his presentation, Prof. Koester provided an overview of the specifics of the agricultural sector and its impact on agricultural trade; furthermore, he clarified that traditional trade theory is of minor relevance for explaining agricultural trade policies and trade flows.

On the 25th of May, ISET was pleased to host the environmental economist and founder of the consultancy company GIST Advisory, Pavan Sukhdev, for a presentation. Starting his career as a physicist, Mr. Sukhdev got interested in the challenges of environmental protection. This led him to investigate economics, particularly aiming at understanding the significance of businesses as a driver of the changes that we see around us as well as third-party impacts, which are known as externalities in economics.

ISET continues its student policy paper seminar series for the institute's second-year students. This time, Ketevan Bochorishvili, Natia Maisuradze, Nami Surguladze, Orkhan Suleymanli, and Nijat Guliyev presented their joint paper on agricultural development.