The Political Economy of Central Asian Countries: Institutional Legacies and Market Transition

Talk by Bakhrom Mirkasimov (Westminster International University in Tashkent) as part of the Research Seminar Series of the IOS Economics Department.

This paper investigates whether and how pre-Soviet institutions from the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Kokand, and the Emirate of Bukhara – through Russian Imperial rule, Soviet rule, and independence – persisted and shaped economic outcomes in Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan today. We utilize a new subnational-level dataset for 208 districts of Uzbekistan by integrating georeferenced historical maps, digitizing Soviet-era archival volumes on regional settlement lists and territorial and population
records for Bukhara, Khorezm, and Turkestan, and matching those data to contemporary socioeconomic indicators. District-level preliminary results reveal that pre-Soviet polities experienced different levels of economic development and human capital outcomes across their historical borders, which persist to this day.