The mountain of promises to modify Georgia’s liberal labor code has recently produced a little mouse in the shape of a statement by Deputy Prime Minister Giorgi Margvelashvili who, according to GeorgiaNews.ge, “branded the new labor code project a “dream of Rosa Luxemburg”. GeorgiaNews.ge also knows to tell that “Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili supported Education Minister Giorgi Margvelashvili’s position on the matter and thought employers should be the side to enjoy the government’s support “at this stage”. The Prime Minister added employees should ...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
May
31
May
29
Does Georgia have a well-developed financial sector? Certainly, proliferation of bank branches and automated teller machines in the capital city of Tbilisi might suggest that it does. And yet, the data indicates that for a country of its size, Georgia has a relatively small financial sector. One of the measures used to approximate financial development or financial depth of the economy is the deposits to GDP ratio. According to the IMF data, this ratio in Georgia is equal to 30,8% (in 2011)- one of the lowest indicators among the economies at simil...
May
27
It is an empirical fact that in market economies the economic activity shows cyclical patterns. The 19th century French economist Clement Juglar is generally attributed with having formulated the first coherent theory of what are known as business cycles. According to Juglar, the cyclical fluctuations are caused through lags in the adjustment of production.
In a market economy, there is no central planner with a birds-eye view on the whole economic system. Rather, what is produced in the economy is decided in an entirely decentralized manner through the ...
May
20
According to the Biblical Book of Genesis, Adam ate the forbidden apple, and now we all have to face the consequences: men have to work “by the sweat of their face” and women have “in pain to bring forth children”. Ever since this fateful event, known as the “Original Sin”, the human condition has become a mess, of which(perhaps) the state of the world economy provides a vivid illustration.
When economists talk about the “original sin”, they have in mind a situation where a country or company is forced to borrow in a foreign currency. Thus, as they accum...
May
07
Once considered the most dynamic sector of the Georgian economy, the banks have recently become a target for fierce criticism by Georgian policymakers and media. In early March, NBG president Giorgi Kadagidze called on commercial banks to reduce interest rates on corporate loans to help accelerate the country’s economic recovery. Bloomberg reports him saying that “interest rates on corporate loans are inappropriately high, between 24 and 30 percent, whereas they should be around 12 percent”. Legislative initiatives seeking to cap interest rates, weaken t...
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