MATH EDUCATION AND GROWTH: RECENT EVIDENCE
Mathematical literacy has always been a key factor in improving a country’s productivity and competitiveness. Stanford University’s Eric Hanushek has shown that there is a positive relationship between students’ performance in mathematics tests and economic growth. This is not at all surprising. Proficiency in math implies a high-level of cognitive skills among the labour force, in other words a high quality of human capital, which leads to technological innovation and productivity gains.
Another more re...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Nov
23
Nov
02
I am not addicted to TV but I found myself sitting in front of the TV almost 24 hours a day before the 2012 Georgian parliamentary elections. I considered myself a rational consumer of information, so it was surprising that was unable to resist the temptation to watch a channel presenting quite slanted opinions. My previously apolitical friends were experiencing the same phenomena. This post is reflection of this. How is it that rational consumers of information like me could come to be consciously watching politically slanted news? How and why was the G...
Oct
26
As Harry S Truman once noted – “It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose your own”. While Georgia was able to grow its economy, this growth did not trickle all the way down. The overall number of jobs did not increase, resulting in very high unemployment, especially among youth and recent university graduates (up to 35% according to some counts).
Unemployment hurts the individuals involved and the economy as a whole. As an individual you lose income, and still worth, may see your value in the labor market (...
Oct
15
The private provision of childcare in Georgia’s cities has been on the rise during the last few years as is especially evident in the capital. Many of the new private kindergartens (KG) are said to provide very good quality services, helping enrich the set of preschool educational choices available to parents (or, rather, their children). Private KGs may be quite a bit more expensive relative to the public alternative, yet their share of the market is increasing over time, suggesting that more and more Georgian families are willing to pay a premium for b...
Oct
02
Despite spectacular growth performance during the past several years (averaging more than 6% since 2005), Georgia remains a poor country. In 2011, Georgia’s GDP per capita reached USD 3,215, just below the average for small island states in the Pacific and just above Guatemala. Still worse, more than half of Georgia’s population live on incomes that are much lower than this average figure. This is so because the Georgian society is plagued by a very high level in income inequality. For instance, in 2011, Georgia’s Gini coefficient – the most common indic...
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