Several years ago the (now former) Georgian government started successful reforms in the electricity sector and was eagerly looking forward to future projects. The improvements made were evident. The rehabilitation of hydroelectric power plants (HPPs) and other structural reforms led to a gradual increase of hydro power generation and to the decrease of electricity imports and thermo power generation. From 2006 this helped Georgia to become a net exporter. By 2010 Georgia exported almost seven times more electricity (1524.3 GWh) than it imported (222.1 G...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Oct
17
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
13
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...
Oct
12
While more than half of all jobs in Georgia are in the agricultural sector, agriculture’s share of value added to GDP was only 11 percent in 2007 (World Bank). And although Georgia was a major producer of food, wine, tea, and mineral water during Soviet times, most of the food products on the shelves today are imported from abroad (FAO).
Yet what is even more remarkable is that Georgia seems to be the only former Soviet republic in which agricultural productivity hasn’t returned to or exceeded its level in 1992. As of 2010, agricultural productivity stoo...
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