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...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Apr
12
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 ...
Apr
09
Large gaps exist between male and female wages across the world. Eurostat data about the unadjusted Gender Pay Gap (GPG) represent the difference between average gross hourly earnings of male and female paid employees as a percentage of average gross hourly earnings of male paid employees. In 2011, in the EU, women earned 16.2 percent less per hour compared to men. The difference varies from 2.3% for Slovenia till 27.3 % for Estonia. The Worldbank Development Report on Gender Equality analyzed data of sixty-four developing and developed countries a...
Apr
05
Many countries in the world run their public pension systems under the so called pay-as-you-go (PAYG) scheme, where pensioners receive their money from those who are currently working. The transfers are made through separate obligatory contributions to the pension system or through general taxes. Unfortunately but predictably, in the last decades the shrinking and ageing populations caused severe problems for PAYG systems, both in advanced as well as in less developed countries. An inevitable consequence of people living longer and fertility rates going ...
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