Would you like to buy in a supermarket where the supermarket owner decides what you will get for your money after you made the payment? Such a supermarket would arguably not attract many customers. Yet although this is an odd allegory, a good deal of our consumption we all make in exactly this way – and we are even forced to buy! We pay taxes to the government, and afterwards politicians decide what we get for this money.
Sellers serving private customers have to deliver value for money. You won’t buy a second time in a grocery store if the food was spoi...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Apr
29
Apr
23
There is no arguing that during the ten years since the Rose Revolution, the Georgian economy registered an impressive growth performance, averaging 6.6% per annum. Summing up Georgia’s post-2004 growth experience, a recent ISET-PI study (Babych and Fuenfzig (2012)), finds it “remarkable not only in light of the 5.3 percent average growth rate in the 1995-2002 period, but also considering that the average GDP growth rate for European and Central Asian developing countries was about 5.1 percent in the period between 2003-2010.”
Yet behind the gliste...
Apr
15
Development of municipal services and infrastructure, in particular transportation infrastructure, is one of the pillars of the State Strategy on the Regional Development of Georgia for the period 2010 to 2017. Even though the strategy was approved by the previous government, the new government is not only committed to continuing all the planned infrastructural projects but is also going to start new projects, focusing on upgrading the regional infrastructure. According to the planned budget for 2013, the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructu...
Apr
12
Georgia has one of the most liberal immigration policies worldwide. Everybody can enter Georgia with an airport visa that is valid for one year. Permanent residency status is granted as soon as one has found employment. Yet compared to other capitals, one encounters rather few foreigners when walking through Tbilisi’s streets. How can Georgia sustain its liberal policy without being overrun by immigrants?
There are two rather trivial reasons. Firstly, there is no incentive to “immigrate into the welfare state”, simply because Georgia does not have one. A...
Apr
11
Please find below a chart with the population data of the 13 Georgian real urban settlements (I.e. plus than 20,000 inhabitants).
As you can see, and contrary to widespread perceptions, there is no significant augmentation of the urban areas' population in Georgia in the last two decades or so. On the contrary, virtually all cities, excepting Tbilisi, saw a population decline, in many cases, with a 20% or more population lost (Kutaisi, Rustavi, Gori). the only exceptions are Zugdidi (certainly due to IDPs influx in the early 90's) and Batumi, that saw a ...
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