Poverty and income inequality are two of the top concerns for the newly elected Georgian government. Indeed, despite impressive growth performance (annual growth rates have averaged more than 6% since 2005), Georgia remains a poor country. Once the wealthiest Soviet republic, Georgia fell far behind others (except, perhaps, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova) on almost any parameter of wellbeing. Adjusted for purchasing power parity, Georgia’s annual income per capita in 2011 was in the $5,400-5,800 ballpark (very similar to the resource-poor Armenia). M...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Dec
10
Dec
03
A few days after the beginning of the August 2008 war with Russia, I found myself on an epic journey through Kvemo Kartli and the volcanic plateau of Samtkhe-Javakheti to Turkey. In an effort to take my family to safety, I was driving a fully-loaded off-road vehicle on what was marked on my map as a “road” from Tbilisi via Tetri Tskharo and Tsalka to Akhatsikhe. This journey of 270 km took about 36 hours, including one hard-to-forget night at a “hotel” in Tsalka (yes, there was and still is such an establishment in Tsalka!). Ok, I admit to taking a littl...
Nov
30
We may recall that the Lazika city project has been proposed by the Saakashvili administration to accelerate the process of urbanization. A new city was suggested as a means of absorbing surplus rural population and thus paving the way for land consolidation and greater productivity in agriculture. No country, it was claimed, was able to modernize itself while maintaining almost 50% in rural employment.
Yet, if we look at the global statistics, Georgia is reasonably urbanized. With 53.2% of urban dwellers, Georgia is ranked 107 in the world, slightly beh...
Nov
26
In his blog post “The puzzle of agricultural productivity in Georgia and Armenia” , Adam Pellillo raises the following question:
Georgia seems to be the only former Soviet republic in which agricultural productivity hasn’t returned to or exceeded its level in 1992. As of 2010, agricultural productivity stood at only 77 percent of where it was at nearly two decades ago. Why hasn’t agricultural productivity improved in Georgia over the past two decades, while it has at least recovered in every other former Soviet republic? It is even more p...
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