When a country engages in scientific research, the fruits are harvested by the whole of humanity. Fundamental research, generating knowledge without direct applications but needed for developing applications, is published in international scientific journals open to everybody. A society can exploit this knowledge without having to pay royalties or patent fees, and, most importantly, without investing in its own research facilities.
Yet even the results of applied research can hardly be monopolized. The economic fortunes of some Asian countries, in partic...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Dec
09
Nov
27
As I do every year since I arrived to Georgia back in 2009, I attended this November the Tbilisi International Fair for Agro, Food and Drink Products, Packaging and Processing. This fair, although very small for international standards (some 60 stands) is actually one of the most important trade exhibitions in the country, and the only significant one with a focus on agriculture and food sectors.
When I visited this fair the years before I always found it a bit 'fake': flashy stands, few visitors (excepting in the inauguration day) and very seldom real ...
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 ...
Nov
15
Georgian agriculture was more developed in Soviet times as it is today. Despite great overall technological progress almost everywhere in the last 20 years, Georgia moved backward when it comes to agriculture. In the year 1990, at the end of the Soviet Union, the number of cattle exceeded 4 million, while today it is just a little more than 1 million. In the Soviet Union, Georgia was a main producer of tea, citrus fruits, deciduous trees, and vine. According to the Rural Poverty Portal, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the output of some of these g...
Oct
21
While written in 1991, “The Development Frontier” by Peter Bauer has lost none of its relevance for Georgia and other predominantly agrarian economies of the 21st century. Economic development, suggests Bauer, “begins with the replacement of subsistence activities by production for sale. Producers will move out of subsistence production only if they see the advantages of doing so and if it is made possible for them to do so. They need the incentive, the opportunity, and the resources.”
And this, according to Bauer, is where the traders come in. Traders m...
Our Partners
