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ISET Economist Blog

A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Mar
26

Political Blame Games: How to Escape the Mankind’s Favorite Game of Destruction?

Imagine the following public exchange between two guys - Serge, the president, and Larry, the CEO of a company by the name Oogle: Serge (Oogle president): You know Larry, our stock market numbers look pretty good today. The Wall Street Journal said it must be because the president is taking the company in the right direction! Larry (Oogle CEO): Come on, Serge, we all know that the president is not calling all the shots around here. And by the way, the numbers would have been much better, if your design team hadn’t made those …. pink-tinted glasses. Serge...
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Mar
21

BMW: Blocks My Way... Around Tbilisi!

The Quality of Living Survey 2012 of the international consultancy group Mercer ranks 222 cities in the world according to how livable they are. Tbilisi was ranked on Place 213, provoking furious reactions by many Georgians. On the internet, it is easy to find wild slanders against those who created the ranking and even against those who just referred to it, and there was even an online petition initiated against the ranking. Without any question, the survey does not capture crucial factors that impact the quality of life. Tbilisi, unlike Lagos in Nigeri...
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Mar
19

Georgian Farmer: From Nonperforming Landowner towards Agricultural Performer

Graph 1 shows the density of Georgian farmers’ revenues received from selling their produce, generated from the sample of 3,000 Georgian rural households. (For the motivation and methodology of our study, please refer to the article that was published here last week. It is also available online on the ISET Economist Blog: “Dumb Farmers Do Not Grow Big Potatoes”, by Florian Biermann and Ruediger Heining).  When the curve of the graph is high, it means that there are many farmers in the respective income range. When it is low, there are few. With...
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Mar
14

A Portrait of a Tushetian Farmer as an Entrepreneur

We first met Gogi Elanidze in winter 2015, when interviewing farmers in Rati’s village, Kvemo Alvani. Located in Akhmeta municipality, Kvemo Alvani and its twin, Zemo Alvani, are not your usual Kakhetian villages. The two serve as the winter base for the people of Tusheti, an isolated valley separated from Kakheti by the 3000m high Abano mountain pass. Getting settled. Kvemo Alvani’s rectangular shape and straight parallel streets betray a fairly recent, Soviet or...
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