Once again, Georgians across the country are preparing for the holiday season, making travel plans, crushing walnuts for gozinaki, and buying gifts for their friends and families. Gifts are an important part of celebrating the New Year and Christmas, signifying the importance of friendship and allowing us to treat our loved ones to something to start a brand new year in style. It is therefore no coincidence that November and December are some of the strongest months for purchasing consumer goods in Georgia, not to mention across Europe and America. ...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Dec
20
Dec
12
A “STAB IN THE BACK” AND ITS “GRAVE CONSEQUENCES”
On November 24th, a Turkish Air Force fighter jet shot down a Russian SU-24 that briefly strayed into its airspace. One pilot was killed, and another member of the Russian military perished in the rescue attempt. Vladimir Putin called the event a “stab in the back” even though he had turned his back on Turkish warnings about incursions into its airspace. Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, facetiously stated that Turkey would not apologize for the event and that Russia should be the one apologizing. ...
Nov
23
Georgian media is full of stories about nepotism and the funny justifications of those involved: When Irakli Garibashvili, still being Minister of the Interior, was confronted with nepotism allegations, he replied: “Don’t you know that a relative of your wife is not your relative?”
When the 23-year-old brother of Vice Prime Minister Kakhi Kaladze’s wife was appointed head of the City Hall’s department for education, sports, and youth affairs, Tbilisi Mayor Davit Narmania stated that he had “known him for a long time and did not consider any oth...
Nov
16
“Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up” – Thomas Wayne to his son (Batman).
The Georgian Government’s pride and joy of the previous years has been its high standing in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index. Investors, policymakers, and economy-watchers around the world have opened editions of magazines like The Economist to see full-page advertisements about why Georgia is ‘different’ among Post-Soviet countries when it comes to doing business. A line such as “Georgia is different because we are the World Bank’s ...
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