On September 30, ISET hosted Dwight Nystrom, Chief of Political and Economic Affairs of the US Embassy. His presentation was titled: “The Reach and Limitations of American Economic Power” and it was focused on US’s footprint on the global economy. Mr. Nystrom also discussed US economic conditions within different sections. According to the data he provided, the US share of GDP in global GDP began declining in 2000 and after the 2008 global financial crisis it began to fall even more sharply. Furthermore, he mentioned merchandise trade partners over the last 35 years. In 1980 case the first three trade partners for US were Canada, Japan and Mexico, but in 2014 Japan was replaced by China. This phenomenon exists for several reasons, but the primary cause is the cheap labor force of China. However, US still remains attractive place for investors, because it still leads the world in foreign direct investment and several other key indicators.
Malkhaz Shashiashvili, professor of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) visited ISET on Thursday, September 17th to present his recent paper "Discrete Time Hedging of the American Option" co-authored with S. Hussain, professor of Government College University. Since his talk contained very complicated mathematical methods, Prof. Shashiashvili started the presentation with giving definitions and key words, in order to make it accessible for a general audience.
In contrast to widespread opinion, the best hedging options require the option’s writer to trade continuously in time. Prof. Shashiashvili claimed that it is possible to construct the perfect portfolio for a discrete amount of time. The perfect hedging requires the knowledge of the partial derivative of the value function of the American option in the underlying asset, which is not explicitly known in most cases of practical importance.
On Friday, June 5th, ISET hosted Mr. Rezo Vashakidze, the founder of Chirina Ltd, by far the largest Georgian producer of poultry products (sold under the BiuBiu brand), a Greenfield investment worth more than 80 mln USD. The main topic of Mr. Vashakidze’s presentation was entrepreneurship in Georgia (as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia).
After introducing himself, Mr. Vashakidze started to reflect on the main challenges and problems many entrepreneurs face when starting to implement their business ideas in Georgia. He brought some important examples from his own experience and gave valuable recommendations how to become successful entrepreneur in Georgia taking all the obstacles and challenges into account. As highlighted by Mr. Vashakidze, one of the most crucial problems in Georgia is that many young people (e.g. students) prefer to work for the government and non-government sectors, rather than private sector or start their own businesses.
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