There are clear expectations in many cultures to marry somebody from their own group, and not living up to these expectations will at least cause a loss in reputation. This is nicely displayed in the movie Late Marriage by Dover Kosashvili, humorously depicting a young Georgian Jew in Israel whose parents want him to marry the “right” woman (the movie features extensive dialogues in Judeao-Georgian, another endangered language).
Why are these sanctions imposed on people who want to marry an “outsider”? There is a simple answer to that question: without t...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Apr
20
Apr
13
Economists disagree whether it was a good decision to reestablish the Georgian competition authority. When some years ago it was removed, the underlying logic was that a non-existing authority cannot be corrupt, and, more importantly, cannot harm the economy through misguided decisions. Assuming that corruption will not be a problem for the competition authority, neither now nor in the future, regulating markets is still a highly delicate issue which yields many possibilities to go wrong.
WHAT IS THE RELEVANT MARKET?
One of the central issues that have t...
Mar
13
Open-air markets, so called bazaars, are considered by many Georgians to be relics of the past. Progressive people buy in supermarkets with all its amenities: clean areas, shiny floors, the temperature regulated at a convenient level, the products placed in order and often arranged tastefully. Only backward people buy in a bazaar if there is a supermarket available.
This shift in shoppers’ preferences is illustrated by changes in the market structure. Five years ago the only big supermarket in Tbilisi was Goodwill, but the presence of supermarkets increa...
Mar
06
Unlike most commodities that are provided by private actors competing with each other, a currency is provided by a monopolist. The only institution that is allowed to produce laris is the National Bank of Georgia (NBG).
The task of the NBG-monopolist is made difficult by various peculiarities that cannot be found in other markets. First of all, lari once injected into the economy are not consumed or used up. They remain in the economy “until the cows come home”, as they say in Scotland. This is starkly different to what we observe in most other ma...
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