ISET kicked off its 2015-16 school year this Monday, August 31 with an orientation session for incoming students. ISET faculty, staff, and researchers warmly greeted the students and gave them a sense of what they can expect out of their next two years of study. ISET Dean of Students, Sopha Gujabidze spoke about the program’s rigor, encouraging students to study hard in their time in the program, but also detailed the close-knit alumni community, and all of the former students’ impressive accomplishments.

It is with deep regret and sadness that ISET confirms that two of our beloved students, Mariam Kutelia and Ivlita Jibuti, became the victims of catastrophic flooding in Tbilisi on June 13th. The whole international community mourns for Georgia, but this news is particularly painful for ISET. It is a terrible tragedy that affected all of us. Life at ISET will never be the same.

On Wednesday, May 27th, Maryam Naghsh Nejad from the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA-Bonn) presented her work in progress “Children of Afghan Migrants in Iran” to the ISET community. The study tries to identify whether there are disparities between Iranian natives and Afghan immigrants and what the sources of these discrepancies are.

On Thursday, May 21st, ISET hosted the Governor of the National Bank of Georgia (NBG), Mr. Giorgi Kadagidze, who delivered a profoundly informative seminar to the ISET community and participants of the ISET Finance Course for Professionals.

On Monday, May 18th, ISET hosted Mr. Jan Klingelhöfer from RWTH Aachen University who presented his paper titled “The Swing Voters' Blessing" to the ISET community. The paper deals with the following question: can democracy work well if the electorate is neither fully informed nor fully rational?