On February 14, Prof. Muhammad Asali delivered a research seminar and presented his work on the relationship between the labor market and the healthiness of the economy. The paper, entitled “Labor Market Discrimination and the Macroeconomy,” which is a joint work with his former student Ms. Rusudan Gurashvili, aimed at measuring and documenting the discriminatory wage gaps in Georgia within gender and ethnic dimensions.

One of ISET’s core values is to provide its students with an international academic environment. One of the key aspects of this mission is the academic seminars the institute periodically hosts; many outstanding scholars have visited ISET to present their research results and discuss issues in the focus of academic circles all over the world.

“You need to think carefully before you jump into this deep sea,” said Professor Daniel Levy at the very beginning of a presentation entitled “Ph.D. Studies – Who Is It For?”. While this statement sounded frightening to those who were planning to pursue a Ph.D. or other further studies, it appeared to be more bemusing for others who were not considering a career in academia.

On January 29, ISET was pleased to host Prof. Michael Beenstock for a seminar workshop. Prof. Beenstock is the author of ten books on topics including time series and spatial econometrics, macroeconomics, the global economy, and economic development, as well as writing more than 100 refereed journal articles.

On Wednesday, January 23, ISET hosted the Governor of the National Bank of Georgia (NBG), Mr. Koba Gvenetadze. Mr. Gvenetadze delivered a profoundly informative lecture about the importance of monetary policies for economic well-being, discussing issues such as the importance of the price stability objective, inflation targeting frameworks (specifically why it is so crucial to avoid both deflation and high inflation), and the efficiency of monetary policy transmission mechanisms under a flexible exchange rate.