One or two years ago, a Lavazza’s take-away coffee shop opened on the side of Georgia’s east-west highway in the area of Zestaponi. You always could find plenty of coffee shops in Tbilisi, but it was a novelty to have them next to the highway. Soon afterwards, another coffee bar opened along the road, and surprisingly, it was again set up close to Zestaponi. And today, there are even more take-away coffee points along that road, and they all cluster at Zestaponi.
Travelling from Tbilisi to Kutaisi or Batumi, you will notice other such clusters. You can b...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Dec
06
Nov
29
Lifetime is one of the most precious assets. People are paying huge amounts of money to extend their lifespans, sometimes for gaining only weeks or months. And imprisonment and death penalty are so widely applied punishments throughout all cultures and ages because people are scared off by the prospect of losing lifetime. As lifetime is such a valuable good, it is surprising that it is largely ignored in the policy debate.
According to the World Populations Prospects report, published in 2010 by the United Nations, Georgians have a life expectancy at bir...
Nov
25
There are many possibilities how to increase the productivity of the Georgian agricultural sector. Experts suggest upgrading knowledge and technologies, promoting the collaboration among farmers, and coping with the land fragmentation problem, to name just a few of the ideas circulating in the debate. The right policy measures may indeed be successful to lift up the productivity, yet the unwanted consequence of a productivity increase may be even higher unemployment among the rural population. In particular, people who are currently underemployed are at ...
Oct
14
When economists speak about education and human capital, they usually mean formal education. It is provided in schools and universities by formally qualified teachers. These are imparting knowledge that is laid down in curricula, and the result of the learning process is testified by certificates and diplomas conferred to those students who passed exams. Hence economists usually measure the availability of human capital in a society by the average number of years citizens attended schools and universities. Yet is formal education the only source of human...
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