Tamar Khitarishvili is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Bard College. She received her PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2003. Her research interests lie in understanding institutional determinants of economic growth and development and in evaluating the role of human capital in that process. She is particularly interested in these issues in relation to transition countries. In her current work, Tamar is assessing a range of questions related to human capital development and labor markets in Georgia. In one of her papers, Tamar estimates Georgian returns to education during 2000 - 2004. Her findings indicate that returns to education in Georgia are among the lowest in the transition countries. In another paper, she evaluates gender wage disparities in Georgia. In it, she finds that a large portion of the gender wage differential in the country cannot be explained by individual characteristics thus pointing to the presence of significant gender discrimination. At Bard, Tamar teaches courses in Macroeconomics; Economic Growth and Development; Economics of Transition Countries; Institutional Economics; and Religion and Economics.