On February 20, ISET students delivered yet another policy seminar. The seminar was opened by Eric Livny, the president of ISET, who delivered an inspirational speech regarding the jobs of the future. He posed the question, “In this rapidly changing world, what do we need to teach schoolchildren today so that their skills and knowledge are still relevant ten or twenty years from now?”.

In recent years, a tendency on the part of different authorities to consolidate has been noted worldwide. Competition agencies are merging with consumer protection agencies and/or regulators in order to establish more effective and less expensive public systems. Accordingly, since the first roundtable meeting on the optimal design of a competition agency, held in February 2003, OECD has organized two more roundtables concerning changes in the institutional design of competition authorities in less than one year – one in December 2014, and one in June 2015.

The next energy revolution is on our doorstep, and it is going to be driven by renewable power generation technologies, which potentially allow for a much more decentralized power system and a less heavy network. Still, power transmission network projects worth USD 40 trillion are being financed through different state and private investments all around the world.

A few weeks ago Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity, among others) presented two new products: solar roof tiles produced by SolarCity, and Tesla’s Powerwall 2, designed to work together to revolutionize the concept of solar PV systems. Energy sector professionals, environmentalists, and renewable energy enthusiasts around the world (including Georgia) were thrilled, and started sharing information and opinions about the new products on social networks, talking of another step towards the revolution of the power sector so many are waiting for.

ISET is proud to announce that resident faculty member Norberto Pignatti has recently become a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), a private, independent research institute based in Bonn (Germany), which conducts nationally and internationally-oriented labor market research. IZA runs the world's largest research network in economic science, comprising over 1,300 international Research Fellows and Affiliates, as well as Policy Fellows from business, politics, society, and the media.