“…….. Georgia clearly has potential. The country is small (5 million people), and horribly poor (even today, average income is below $4,000 per year). If Georgians could just become as rich as Croatia, they too could start beating England at Wembley.” – Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, Soccernomics, (2006, p.287)
“Football was born in England, grew to Brazil and died in Georgia” – a well-known joke about Georgian football.
This summer, Russia is again at the epicenter of the world, but this time for hosting the 21st FIFA World Cup football tourna...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Jul
02
Jun
30
Summer is a good time for traveling to the sea, but now I want you to join me in the journey in time. A memory from my childhood in the early 2000s was the discussion among people about the choice between “Khrushovka” and “Chekhuri.” Households were buying flats and making investments in real estate. It is difficult to explore the real reasons why people prefer real estate over other types of investments, but the some of the standard arguments which I was hearing were the following: “if something happens it is still a real estate,” “at least I will have ...
Jun
18
Georgian and Armenian ruling parties have been until recently basking in the glory of high GDP growth rates. Armenia’s stellar growth performance of 7.5% in 2017 and Georgia’s respectable 5% are, indeed, worthy of praise. However, do these figures really matter for the objective well-being of the majority of Georgians and Armenians? Second, how does economic growth, as measured by GDP, affect people’s subjective perception of happiness? Third, what does it do to crime rates and people’s appetite for political representation, social justice and fairness?
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Jun
18
Do you happen to have some 1.7 trillion USD to spare? Somewhere between 2 and 10% of the Georgian population suffers from lack of basic access to drinking water (Global High-level Panel on Water and Peace, 2017; The Global Water Partnership and OECD, 2015). Globally, 1 in 4 people will be affected by shortages of fresh water by the year 2050 (United Nations, 2018). It is therefore necessary to look at financial instruments that could help safeguard the supply of fresh water. Here, we will look at examples of such financial instruments, which have, for in...
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