The unique cross-country study compares interest rates for a set of retail credit products in Georgia and select transition economies. Preliminary findings suggest that the cost of credit in Georgia is lower than in the CIS countries which have been covered by the survey (namely, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and in many cases Armenia) while it’s somewhat higher compared to a cohort of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEE) - this is true especially for local currency loans.

The unique cross-country study compares interest rates for a set of retail credit products in Georgia and select transition economies. The results suggest that the cost of credit in Georgia is lower than in the CIS countries which have been covered by the survey (namely, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and in many cases Armenia) while it’s somewhat higher compared to a cohort of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEE) - this is true especially for local currency loans.

This research aims to explain how Georgia’s economic development in the past 12-15 years took place despite the absence of rural-urban migration, defying the predictions of the Lewis Model - one of the most influential theories in development economics.

On October 21, 2017, Georgia’s entire political map was painted in different shades of blue – the color of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party. GD won in all but one race in the country’s municipal elections – achieving solid majorities in all sakrebulo (city councils) and placing party-backed candidates as mayors in all cities and self-governing communities.

In economics, there is a long-standing debate on whether emerging markets should adopt a fixed exchange rate currency regime or leave their exchange rates up to markets to decide. Intuitively, the exchange rate is just another price, similar to the price of a sack of potatoes, a liter of milk, or a kilogram of honey. Except that the exchange rate is the price of 1 unit of foreign currency (say, 1 US dollar) in terms of our domestic currency.