Speaking at the opening of the Tbilisi Silk Road Forum, Georgia’s new Minister of Foreign Affairs Giorgi Kvirikashvili evoked electric circuitry as a metaphor to describe the future of rail and road connections between Europe and Asia. A graduate of the prestigious math and physics Komarov School, Kvirikashvili explained that a sequential circuit – a simple chain – crucially depends on each and every one of its links.

While written in 1991, “The Development Frontier” by Peter Bauer has lost none of its relevance for Georgia and other predominantly agrarian economies of the 21st century. Economic development, suggests Bauer, “begins with the replacement of subsistence activities by production for sale.

Those among our readers who happened to spend a good deal of their lifetimes in the Soviet Union may remember that there was not just one kind of socialism, but there were many different versions.