The Khachapuri Index is one of the most popular Indexes in Georgia. ISET uses the Khachapuri Index as a simple tool that tracks inflation. The creation of the Khachapuri Index was inspired by the Big Mac Index, made and used by the Economist. ISET’s Khachapuri index uses a basket for calculating inflation that includes only those ingredients that are needed to cook one Imeretian khachapuri – flour, cheese, yeast, milk, eggs, and butter.

As a key finding in this year’s EPI-scoring, air quality keeps deteriorating human health in such a manner that it is considered as “…the leading environmental threat to public health” (EPI, 2018). The exposure of pollution and its particles from e.g. heavy traffic is a contributing factor. In Sweden, the transporting sector constitutes 1/3 of the total CO2 emissions.

ISET would like to congratulate two of its resident faculty members, Karine Torosyan and Norberto Pignatti, together with our visiting faculty member Maksym Obrizan, on the publication of their new joint paper “Job market outcomes of IDPs: the case of Georgia”, in the IZA Discussion Paper Series from the Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn (the series is ranked 6th worldwide for economics by IDEAS/RePEc).

In January 2018, an IMF Working Paper published new results on the shadow economy situation for 158 countries from 1991 to 2015. According to Medina and Schneider (2018), the shadow economy in Georgia during that period constituted, on average, 64.9% of GDP – the highest indicator in the world! In 2015 (the last year available), things were slightly better for Georgia, with the share of the shadow economy standing at 53%.

ISET would like to congratulate resident faculty member Norberto Pignatti on the publication of a new paper (together with Hartmut Lehmann of the University of Bologna) entitled “Informal Employment Relationships and the Labor Market: Is there Segmentation in Ukraine?”, in the IZA Discussion Paper Series, from the Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn (the series is ranked 6th worldwide for economics by IDEAS/RePEc).