One day in my village, I saw our neighbors carrying TV sets, refrigerators, parabolic antennas, and washing machines out of their house. Soon I found out that they were hiding all that stuff from the Social Service Agency (SSA) that was about to check eligibility for social benefits. Later, when I spoke with some other villagers, it turned out that some families had even sold their cows to become eligible for social assistance. “Cows are costly and do not give income on a permanent basis”, they said. Others avoided work contracts because official em...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Jun
09
May
26
On May 2, 2014, the Georgian parliament unanimously passed the law on the elimination of any form of discrimination. The stated objective of the law is to ensure that any physical or legal entity equally benefits from all rights defined by Georgian legislation, irrespective of race, skin color, language, sex, citizenship, place of origin, birth or residence, wealth or class status, religion or belief, national, ethnic or social belonging, profession, marital or health status, disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, political or other considera...
May
23
The existence of a sizeable shadow (or second, informal) economy in the USSR was and is well-known. The Soviet era was characterized by a very rigid formal system with a high level of bureaucratization and inefficient planning. This resulted in many problems, both in terms of production and consumption. Soviet consumers experienced constant frustration and dissatisfaction caused by endlessly searching for goods and services they demanded, the need to queue for them without any guarantee of getting what they wanted, and the risk of having instead to accep...
May
12
Speaking with managers of companies operating in Georgia, one frequently hears complaints about a lack of certain specialists in the Georgian labor market. For instance, firms operating in the construction sector are often forced to hire foreign experts, as they do not find sufficiently qualified engineers and architects in Georgia. The shortage is particularly pressing in technical subjects and the sciences.
The mere existence of this problem contradicts conventional economic wisdom. If there are certain qualifications not available in the labor market ...
May
09
In the 15th century, the Kingdom of Georgia started a painful process of disintegration from which it did not recover until the modern era, and ultimately, Georgia’s breakup at the end of the medieval age accounts for the regrettable fact that the country could not maintain its status as an independent nation (Florian Biermann and I discussed the cataclysmic Treaty of Georgievsk in our article about King Erekle II).
George VIII. was the last king to rule a united Georgia for about 20 years, starting from 1446. During this period, the country’s unity was ...
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