ISET

ISET Economist Blog

A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Dec
06

The Georgian Tax Lottery Experiment after Seven Years

More than three decades ago economists famously concluded that tax compliance is rather irrational behavior. Literature, across a wide range of disciplines, has since been overflowing with analysis as to why we see so much tax compliance in the modern world. The academic literature is concerned with why people pay so much tax or why so many people pay taxes, therefore policy-makers can gain an understanding of the underlying mechanisms, which thus allows them to design appropriate policy actions to boost revenue efforts. Income generated from tax collect...
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Jun
14

The Dire State of Business Support Organizations in Georgia

In technological terms, there has never been a better time to be a small or medium size business owner: people can always get ahold of you and you can work wherever you need to. Creating an additional source of income catches people’s interests all over the world; as an additional motivation, we often hear about the launch of yet another program directly helping these businesses, thus making it easier to become a start-upper. And here, the rhetorical question: “why not?!” pops into some people’s minds. Starting a small or medium size enterprise (SME) ser...
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Apr
26

Granted Survival!

Various business support programs have been implemented in many countries across the world. Grants, interest-rate subsidies, and equity participation are among some of the most adopted tools for promoting firms’ performances (Dupont and Martin, 2006). Such assistance programs also have their own objectives. For example, low-interest rate loans and cash transfers to new and small firms are designed to overcome the financial constraints many firms face (Hubbard, 1998). Moreover, these programs may aim to help firms adopt new technologies (Bronzini and Pise...
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Mar
22

One Small Step for a Man, Big Data for Mankind: Uses of Alternative Data Sources in Tourism Development

There are many mesmerizing buildings in Tbilisi, but do you know which one tourists favor the most? Or have you ever wondered what travelers’ favorite Georgian food or wine is? Thanks to modern tools and data-gathering methods, we now have actual proof that khachapuri is tourists’ all-time favorite Georgian dish. In 2018, the Georgian National Tourism Administration (GNTA), along with Communication Agency Windfor’s, launched a campaign called  “Emotions are Georgia” to determine what foreign tourists admire the most in our beautiful country and whic...
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Feb
18

Who Is the Surgeon?

Riddles are fun; sometimes, though, they teach us more than expected. Consider this riddle, for example. A son and his father get into a terrible accident; the father dies immediately while the son is rushed to the hospital for an urgent operation. A minute after being called in, a prominent surgeon steps out from the operating room and says “I cannot operate on this boy; he is my son”. Who is the surgeon? Take a guess! Hopefully, many of you guessed the quite obvious answer: the surgeon is the boy’s mother. The riddle has gained popularity due to the si...
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