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Women are generally under-represented in political offices worldwide, and their under-representation becomes larger in more senior positions. Infırst brıef the author reviews some recent academic literature in economics and political science on the likely causes of women’s under-representation. Broadly speaking, the literature has divided such causes into “supply-side” and “demand-side” factors: the former include women’s potentially lower willingness to run for political office, whereas the latter include voters’ and party leaders’ prejudices against women in politics. Understanding the underlying causes of women’s under-representation in political institutions is crucial in order to design the most effective policies to address the existing gender gaps. In concluding the author summarizes some of the policies that have been proposed or used to empower women in politics and reviews the evidence on their effectiveness when available.
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This paper analyses income distribution and poverty reduction in Georgia in the period 2010 to 2017/2018. As we have no data for 2019, our findings do not relate to the most recent distributional policies of the Georgian government.
Our results suggest that while Georgia has substantially reduced poverty and income inequality, continuous monitoring of the situation would be helpful.
Main findings are:
• Georgia has made significant progress in poverty reduction, almost halving the poverty rate to 16% during 2010 to 2015 (using the World Bank measure for lower middle-income countries). However, poverty did not decline further from 2016 to 2018 and remains high when compared to peer group countries.
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In the past several months the world has been rocked by profound economic and social turbulence. The COVID-19 epidemic has forced many countries around the world into widespread emergency lockdowns. Economic activity plunged dramatically in February-March 2020, with rapid indicators showing strong contractions in retail, restaurant business, and passenger transport. The scale of the imminent economic fallout is not yet known, but early expert opinions suggest that the economic shock may be even more dramatic than during the 2008 global financial crisis. Under these circumstances, it seems impossible to think of any kind of economic policies except those related to the epidemic and the means of combatting its fallout. Yet, some policies, particularly those that have long-term economic consequences for the country, deserve our attention even in these turbulent times. Among them are the larization policy
measures initiated by the National Bank of Georgia in June 2016.
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