A country without oil needs smart people! This clearly applies to Georgia. Not endowed with substantial amounts of natural resources, Georgia totally depends on its human resources. Yet how good is the intellectual equipment of the Georgians that is so urgently required for driving the economic development of this country?
When it comes to applied knowledge that can directly be utilized for economic activities, the picture is rather disenchanting. According to UNDP data, 81% of Georgian unemployed completed secondary or higher education. Yet as we wrote ...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
May
13
Apr
17
“Fast and furious... Soviet-style: Crazy stunt drivers of Georgia try to impress Hollywood by speeding through crowded public streets.” The clip, uploaded by the team of would-be-stunts has reportedly received 2million YouTube views in a week. While supposedly there is no such thing as bad publicity, Georgia may find the hard way that this is not an iron clad rule.
With very low levels of domestic savings and no oil and gas resources at hand, Georgia can only achieve higher productivity levels by borrowing abroad and increasing the quantity and qual...
Mar
22
An unprejudiced look at the Georgian economy is rather disenchanting. Starting in 1990 at a per capita income that was close to Poland’s, Georgia went into a free fall as a result of secession wars, loss of markets, an explosion of crime and corruption, and the staggering incompetency of its governments. It took Georgia 17 years, until 2007, to merely return to where it stood at the end of the Soviet Union. In these 17 years, Poland increased its output per capita by almost 700%, achieving a level of more than 25% percent of its neighbor Germany.
While G...
Mar
01
Georgia is flooded with cheap Turkish products: tasteless winter tomatoes, clothes, construction materials, you name it. Turkish goods are everywhere – in specialized shops in central Tbilisi, supermarkets, and the Eliava Bazroba. Is this happening because Turkey is our neighbor, because Georgian people love Turkish products, or what?
Turkish exports to Georgia have been growing very fast since the Rose Revolution but they received an additional push in 2009, following the signing of a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries in Nov...
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