President of ISET Alumni Association
Lasha Labadze has been with ISET since 2008, serving as a researcher and subsequently as deputy director and executive director of the ISET Policy Institute until January 2018. At ISET, as well as managing a team of researchers, conducted his own research and provided economic policy consulting and training services. In 2017, Lasha also became co-director of ISET’s newly-established BA program in Economics. In 2018, Lasha was elected to be ISET alumni association president and joined ISET's governing board as an ex-officio member.
Since February 2018, Lasha has served as an Assistant Professor at the American University of the Middle East in Kuwait. His research interests are primarily in applied microeconomics, education economics, labor economics and agricultural economics. He holds PhD degree in Economics from Tbilisi State University (2015), and a Master's degree in economics from ISET (2008).
Projects
1. Costs and Benefits of Labour Mobility between the EU and the Eastern Partnership Partner Countries
3. Computable General Equilibrium Model for Georgia
4. Cooperation for Rural Prosperity in Georgia (ENPARD)
6. Population Situation Analysis in Georgia
7. Impact of East-West Highway Corridor
8. Good Jobs for Inclusive Growth
9. Consumer Demand Analysis for JSC Sarajishvili
10. Identify Determinant Factors of Mathematics Test Results in Georgian Schools
Publications
1. Costs and Benefits of Labour Mobility between the EU and the Eastern Partnership Partner Countries
2. Public Expenditures on Education and Health in Georgia Before and During the Global Crisis
3. Five Million Tourists in Georgia by 2015 – a Myth or a Nightmarish Reality?
4. Public Expenditures on Education and Health in Georgia Before and After the Global Crisis, 2011
5. Costs and Benefits of Labor Mobility between the EU and the Eastern Partnership Partner Countries – EuropeAid/130215/C/SER/Multi, 2012
6. Population Situation analysis (PSA) Georgia 2014. United Nations Population Fund, 2015
7. Transfer of Know-How to Small and Mid-Size Businesses in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. White Paper: Georgia. 2015
8. The consumption of untaxed cigarettes in Switzerland: “La consommation de cigarettes non taxées en Suisse: estimation à partir du Monitorage suisse des addictions”. Published on the Webpage of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, 2016
Deputy Head of the Macroeconomic Policy Research Center
Giorgi also works as a lecturer in Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and Practice Courses in Excel at Ilia State University, having previously lectured at Tbilisi State University and the University of Georgia.
His academic background includes a BA in Macroeconomics and MA in Economics. Currently, Giorgi is an Economics PhD student at Tbilisi State University, with his research interests including
Projects
1.Good Jobs for Inclusive Growth in Central and West Asia
2. Priority Investment Sectors
3. Study on Trade Facilitation in the South Caucasus
4. Solving the Puzzle of Economic Development without Rural-Urban Migration in Georgia
8. Assessing Participation of CAREC Countries in Global and Regional Value Chains
10. Training on Macroeconomic Forecasting and Economic Monitoring for Policy Purposes in Georgia
11. Development of Indirect Impact Assessment Methodology and Multipliers
Zurab Abramishvili is a senior researcher in the Education and Social Policy Research Center at ISET-PI and visiting lecturer at ISET (under Czech Development Agency). He completed an internship with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
He is a Ph.D. candidate at CERGE-EI and the title of dissertation is “Essays on Economics of Education and Social Policy”. From 2013 to 2016, he was a researcher at the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and he taught BA (MA) courses at Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno. He was given two scientific grants from GND in 2014 and EERC in 2015.
Head of the Private Sector Development Research Center
Giorgi Papava leads the Private Sector Development Policy Research Center at the ISET Policy Institute (ISET PI). Giorgi is a candidate for a PhD Economics (ADB) at the University of Chicago. His PhD thesis, ‘Trade Policy in the Presence of Lobbying and Heterogeneously Ignorant Voters’, is a joint work with Lasha Chochua. Giorgi has earned MA degrees in Economics from the University of Chicago (2012) and ISET (2008).
Before joining ISET in February 2020, Giorgi had successfully cooperated, as an economic consultant and researcher, with several local and international organizations.
Giorgi Papava is a CERGE-EI Career Integrated Fellow (CIF), currently teaching two courses at ISET: ‘Law and Economics’ and ‘Industrial Organization’. His research interests include International Trade, Industrial Organization, Political Economy, Public Policy and Monetary Economics.
Projects
1. Development of Indirect Impact Assessment Methodology and Multipliers
2. Developing a Water Policy Outlook for Georgia: country assessment
Publications
Skhirtladze, Sophiko, Zurab Abramishvili, Giorgi Papava, and Irakli Barbakadze. "Impact Assessment of the State Support Program for Micro and Small Enterprises in Georgia." Economics Bulletin 40, no. 2 (2020): 1075-1082.
Senior Researcher at the Macroeconomic Policy Research Center
Davit Keshelava joined the Macroeconomic Policy Research Center of the ISET Policy Institute as a researcher in July 2016. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Tbilisi State University in 2014, and earned a Master’s Degree in Economics from the International School of Economics (ISET) at TSU in 2016. His MA focused on Macroeconomics, and studied early warning indicators of banking crises in small, open economies. He is currently a third-year student of the Ph.D. program in economics at Tbilisi State University (TSU), and has been working on a Ph.D. thesis entitled “Currency Crises and Optimal Monetary Policy – Example of Georgia”.
Being a senior researcher at the ISET Policy Institute, Davit has been working on different economic projects which focus on macroeconomics, gender economics, social policy, cost benefit analysis, regulatory impact assessment, and program evaluation. He specializes in macroeconomic research, and is responsible for producing monthly reports of the GDP forecast, writing blogs on economic topics, and working on research projects. His research interests include Macroeconomic theory, Growth theory and Development Economics.
Projects
1. Study on Trade Facilitation in the South Caucasus
2. Global Programme to Prevent Son Preference and Gender-Biased Sex Selection
3. Policy Analysis of the Ongoing Economic Reforms
6. Assessing Participation of CAREC Countries in Global and Regional Value Chains
8. Training on Macroeconomic Forecasting and Economic Monitoring for Policy Purposes in Georgia
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