The term “economics imperialism” has been coined in recent decades to describe a tendency of economists to meddle with such seemingly non-economic aspects of life as crime, the family, irrational behavior, politics, culture, religion and war. Mine is an attempt to invade the world of music.
Let’s visit Versaille first:
This is baroque music, middle baroque, to be more precise. It is written by a guy, whose name was Jean Baptiste Lully for another guy, who went by a nickname a Sun King. The latter was a sucker for a good operas, ballets and...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Oct
13
Oct
08
Few elections in recent years were watched as carefully around the world as the Georgian parliamentary elections. And few political and economic observers shunned the opportunity to interpret its stunning outcome. The majority view, so it seems, is that Georgia passed a “litmus test for democratic governance” (Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation). A few others, however, consider the victory of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s coalition as the end of the “Georgian experiment” which, according to them, was about combining radical economic reforms and universal suf...
Oct
03
The question of the title seems to be a rhetorical one. With the 2008 global financial crisis fresh in our minds, the logic of the vicious cycle between the economic slowdown, troubles in the banking sector, credit crunch, and the subsequent industrial decline reinforcing the credit conundrums seems quite apparent.
But are the recessions accompanied by financial crises different from other brands of recessions? And if so, how? The economists are yet to reach the ultimate verdict. And yet, this purely academic question comes to the fore of political...
Sep
26
As any other labor-exporting country, Georgia faces both the costs and benefits of migration. The main costs include human capital flight – the so-called “brain drain” – and the distortion of the age and gender structure of the population.
The benefits include alleviating social pressures caused by high unemployment rates, the international experience and skills returning migrants bring back to their home countries, and, very importantly, the remittances, or money transfers, that emigrants make to their families. For many households in Georgia these mone...
Aug
30
The scars of the 2008 global financial crisis, and the festering wounds of the ongoing European debt crisis seem to have obscured one simple textbook truth: long-term economic development largely depends on the growth of the total factor productivity (TFP), sometimes referred to simply as the technological progress.
TFP, however, is an elusive phenomenon. This is usually the unexplained part of the output growth, the “residual” left over after we have accounted for all other known contributing factors. Another uncomfortable truth is that technologi...
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