Activating Retail Investors in Uzbekistan: Bridging Behavioral Barriers and Structural Challenges

Evidence suggests that Uzbekistan possesses untapped household capital that could be redirected into the stock market. The gap between growing opportunity and weak public participation suggests that the problem is not solely economic or technical. Rather, the core bottleneck is behavioral, reinforced by structural constraints. In Uzbekistan, these behavioral barriers are intensified by institutional weaknesses such as low liquidity, fragmented information, outdated infrastructure, and concerns over investor protection. Therefore, the activation of retail investors requires a dual strategy: behavioral interventions on the demand side and structural modernization on the supply side. Read more

Dostonbek Eshpulatov is an Associate Professor of Economics at Gulistan State University, Uzbekistan. He holds a PhD in Economics and specializes in financial behavior and stock market participation in transition economies.

Prospects for Economic Growth Through Export Diversification

Uzbekistan’s falling transport costs and improving connectivity to Europe and Asia have created a rare strategic opening to diversify its export base beyond commodities. This policy brief shows how targeted trade facilitation, logistics reform, and business-friendly policies, especially for SMEs, can turn connectivity into sustained growth and deeper integration into global value chains. For policymakers shaping Uzbekistan’s next reform phase, this is a timely roadmap for converting infrastructure gains into real economic transformation. Read more

Richard Pomfret is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Adelaide and Senior Associate Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center. He has acted as consultant to international organizations such as the Asian Development Bank, the OECD, the UNDP and the World Bank. In 1992-4 he was seconded to the United Nations, advising the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Three books on Central Asian economies were published by Princeton University Press in 1995, 2006, and 2019. His most recent book Connecting Europe and China: Prospects for the Middle Corridor, will be published by Edward Elgar (UK) in January 2026.

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  Activating Retail Investors in Uzbekistan: Bridging Behavioral Barriers and Structural Challenges
  CAP Uzbekistan POLICY BRIEF by Dostonbek Eshpulatov, May 4, 2026 Download the full policy brief (Download the full policy brief in Uzbek) In neighboring Kazakhstan, 14.65% of citizens leverage brokerage accounts for long-term wealth accumulation. On the contrary, in Uzbekistan, participation remains critically low at just 2.48%. Despite significant untapped domestic capital, household savings consistently bypass…
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  Prospects for Economic Growth Through Export Diversification
  CAP UZBEKISTAN POLICY BRIEF by Richard Pomfret, February 2, 2026 Uzbekistan is experiencing a period when transport costs to major markets in Asia and Europe are falling. If accompanied by appropriate domestic polices to reduce the cost of doing business and of conducting international trade, this offers a window of opportunity for diversification of the Uzbek…

Uzbekistan Expanded Higher Education. Did Equality of Opportunity Follow? Evidence from 2010–2023

Since 2017, Uzbekistan has made higher-education expansion a central part of its development strategy. New universities, branch campuses, and enrollment growth have created opportunities that were much more limited a decade ago. This matters in Uzbekistan, where a large youth population is entering the labor market and demand for higher-level skills is rising. This brief asks whether Uzbekistan’s rapid higher-education expansion has been accompanied by broader opportunity. The answer is cautious. The system has grown substantially, but family background remains closely linked to who reaches higher education, while regional access remains uneven. The next phase of reform should therefore judge success not only by the number of institutions and seats, but by whether first-generation, rural, and lower-income students can use the new capacity. Read more

Nozimjon Ortiqov is an economist and policy analyst with more than a decade of experience supporting Uzbekistan’s reform agenda through evidence-based research and policy diagnostics. He serves as Deputy Director at the Center for Economic Research and Reforms (CERR) under the Presidential Administration of Uzbekistan, where he leads analytical initiatives on macroeconomic forecasting, productivity and regional development diagnostics, SME policy, and reform evaluation in collaboration with international partners.

Aligning Uzbekistan’s Higher Education with Global Standards

Over the past eight years, Uzbekistan’s higher education system has entered a new and defining stage of reform. This paper explores how Uzbekistan can align its teacher education with global benchmarks while maintaining local relevance. It examines key pillars of international practice: competency-based learning, credit-modular systems such as ECTS, extended school internships, and outcome-based assessment. Read more

Firdavs Navruzov is an education leader in Uzbekistan and the Managing Director of The Knowledge Academy. His work centers on strengthening school quality, leadership, and academic standards, and on building institutions that combine strong governance with high expectations for teaching and learning. He previously served as Director of the
Transformation Department at Uzbekistan National Pedagogical University and was Principal of the Presidential School in Bukhara, where he led academic and organizational development. He has also worked with American Councils as a consultant, training and supporting school leaders. In addition, he conducted research at George Washington University’s Central Asia Program and is a former Muskie and Fulbright fellow.

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  Uzbekistan Expanded Higher Education. Did Equality of Opportunity Follow? Evidence from 2010–2023
  CAP Uzbekistan POLICY BRIEF No 9 by Nozimjon Ortiqov, June 2026 The next phase of reform should therefore judge success not only by the number of institutions and seats, but by whether first-generation, rural, and lower-income students can use the new capacity. Nozimjon Ortiqov is an economist and policy analyst with more than a decade of…
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  Aligning Uzbekistan’s Higher Education with Global Standards
  CAP Uzbekistan POLICY BRIEF by Firdavs Navruzov, February 17, 2026 This paper explores how Uzbekistan can align its teacher education with global benchmarks while maintaining local relevance. It examines key pillars of international practice: competency-based learning, credit-modular systems such as ECTS, extended school internships, and outcome-based assessment. Fridays Navruzov is an education leader in Uzbekistan and…

Road Safety as a Test of Urban Governance: Why Uzbekistan’s Problem Is Not Urbanization, but How It Is Managed

Uzbekistan’s road-safety crisis should not be treated as the unavoidable cost of urbanization. Urban growth and motorization increase exposure to risk, but they do not automatically produce high fatality rates. Road deaths rise when expanding mobility is governed through fragmented institutions, weak data systems, unsafe road design, and infrastructure investment that prioritizes movement over safety. The policy problem is therefore not urbanization itself, but the way urban mobility is governed. Uzbekistan already has institutions, financing instruments, enforcement mechanisms, digital capacity, and international support. What remains missing is an integrated operating system that connects these tools to one measurable public outcome: reducing deaths and serious injuries. Read more

Alouddin Komilov serves as Policy Analyst and Head of the International Political Development Unit at the Center for Progressive Reforms (CPR) and as Adjunct Assistant Professor at Webster University in Tashkent. His current research focuses on urbanization, road safety, and infrastructure reform in Uzbekistan, with an emphasis on developing practical, policy-oriented recommendations to improve institutional coordination and infrastructure governance amid rapid urban growth.

From Urban Growth to Road Risk: A Safer Mobility Agenda for Tashkent

Road safety in Tashkent is fundamentally a growth-management problem. The success of Tashkent 2045 and Uzbekistan’s 2030 reform strategy should be judged not only by infrastructure delivery and metropolitan modernization, but also by whether they reduce deaths and serious injuries as the city grows. This paper recommends mainstreaming road safety into metropolitan planning, prioritizing speed management, redesigning high-risk corridors, strengthening public transport as a safety intervention, improving data-led governance, and institutionalizing cross-sector coordination. Read more

Farrukh Irnazarov is a development economist, researcher, and project manager from Uzbekistan with over 15 years of experience in economic development, investment policy, urbanization, agribusiness, trade, labor migration, and regional cooperation. He is the Co-Founder and Country Director for Uzbekistan at the Central Asian Development Institute and CEO of RANSIF Group, where he leads policy research, advisory work, and strategic initiatives across Central Asia.

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  Road Safety as a Test of Urban Governance: Why Uzbekistan’s Problem Is Not Urbanization, but How It Is Managed
  CAP Uzbekistan Policy Brief No. 7, June 2026 by Alouddin Komilov Urbanization and motorization do increase exposure to traffic risk, but they do not automatically produce high fatality rates. Fatalities rise when demand for expanding mobility is governed by fragmented institutions, non-integrated data, and road-investment systems that do not make safety a binding condition Alouddin Komilov…
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  From Urban Growth to Road Risk: A Safer Mobility Agenda for Tashkent
  CAP Uzbekistan POLICY BRIEF No 4 by Farrukh Irnazarov, May 4, 2026 The key policy implication is that road safety in Tashkent is not just a transport-enforcement issue. It is a metropolitan development issue. As the city expands, travel demand is rising faster than safe multimodal access. Farrukh Irnazarov is a development economist, researcher, and project…

Pathways to Empowering Women in Uzbekistan’s Labor Market Impact

This policy brief summarizes the key features of women’s empowerment in Uzbekistan’s labor market, focusing on employment, self-employment, and educational attainment. It highlights how labor market informality and unpaid care responsibilities constrain women’s economic empowerment. Addressing these structural barriers and aligning women’s empowerment policies with national development goals—specifically by supporting entrepreneurship, improving childcare infrastructure, and advancing digital and financial inclusion—can help transform Uzbekistan’s demographic trends into a driver of national prosperity. Read more

Olga Popova is a Senior Researcher in the Economics Department of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS, Regensburg, Germany) and a Research Fellow of the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and the IZA@LISER network (Luxembourg). She holds a PhD in Economics from the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute (CERGE-EI) and Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). Her research examines the role of the environment, institutional legacies, and inequalities in economic development and individual behavior, with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Vladimir Otrachshenko is a Senior Researcher in the Research Department of the National Bank of Slovakia and a Research Fellow at the IZA@LISER network (Luxembourg). He is a coordinator of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) Research Cluster on Climate Change (2026-2027). He holds a PhD in Economics from Nova School of Business and Economics (Lisbon, Portugal). His research interests include climate change, environmental economics and policymaking, business and labor market development, and sustainability.

Impact of Reforms on Women Economic Empowerment in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan has undergone a significant transformation since 2017, with the government committing to gender equality as a pillar of its modernization agenda. Yet beneath the headline indicators of reform, structural barriers continue to limit women’s full and equal participation in the labor market. This policy brief examines four interconnected domains: access to higher education; the gender wage gap and care penalty; workplace sexual harassment; and social norms, domestic violence, and institutional response. Across these areas, the brief distinguishes between institutional barriers — those found in laws, administrative practices, and organizational culture, and cultural barriers – those based on attitudes, social norms, and gender expectations, because effective policy needs to address both together and step by step. Read more

Shoirakhon Nurdinova PhD, is an Associate Professor at Kimyo International University in Tashkent. She holds a PhD in Economics from Anadolu University (Türkiye). Her research focuses on behavioral economics, migration, and gender studies in Central Asia. She is recognized as a pioneer of happiness economics research in Uzbekistan and is the author of the first Uzbek-language textbook on behavioral economics.

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  Pathways to Empowering Women in Uzbekistan’s Labor Market
  CAP Uzbekistan POLICY BRIEF No 7 by Olga Popova and Vladimir Otrachshenko Supporting entrepreneurship, improving childcare infrastructure, and advancing digital and financial inclusion can help transform Uzbekistan’s demographic trends into a driver of national prosperity. Olga Popova is a Senior Researcher in the Economics Department of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS,…
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  Impact of Reforms on Women Economic Empowerment in Uzbekistan
  CAP Uzbekistan POLICY BRIEF No 6 by Dr Shoirakhon Nurdinova The central finding of this analysis is that Uzbekistan faces two challenges. The first is institutional: closing the gaps between formal reform commitments and the administrative practices, enforcement mechanisms, and accountability structures required to give them real effect. The second is cultural: narrowing the distance…

The Deadweight Loss of Emigration in Uzbekistan and the Potential of Youth to Unlock the Demographic Dividend

Uzbekistan stands at a critical juncture. With a large cohort of young people entering working age, the country has a unique opportunity to achieve sped up growth through a demographic dividend—but only if youth can be productively absorbed into the domestic economy. At the same time, Uzbekistan has become a major labor-exporting nation, with emigration increasingly concentrated among the young. While remittances provide vital income and foreign exchange, they also obscure deeper structural challenges. The key policy question is whether current patterns of youth emigration ultimately strengthen or weaken Uzbekistan’s long-term development.

Éva Berde is a professor of economics at Széchenyi István University in Győr, Hungary, and also holds an affiliation with Corvinus University of Budapest. Her main research area focuses on the relationship between demography and the economy, which led her to study the evolution of the demographic dividend in Central Asia. Closely related to this work is the development of the concept of the deadweight loss of emigration, which is the central concept of the present study. In addition, Éva Berde conducts research on the gig economy and Massive Open Online Courses.  

Muyassar Kurbanova is a researcher specializing in the intersection of labor economics and demography. She holds a PhD in Economics from Corvinus University of Budapest (Hungary). Her research focuses on the socio- economic impacts of demographic transitions, covering age discrimination in labor markets and changing patterns of international migration. She has authored several articles and papers, primarily focused on Central Asia.

Read more:

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  The Deadweight Loss of Emigration in Uzbekistan and the Potential of Youth to Unlock the Demographic Dividend
  CAP UZBEKISTAN POLICY BRIEF by Éva Berde and Myassar Kurbanova, February 11, 2026 The central policy challenge is not to maximize remittances, but to minimize deadweight loss by creating an economy in which young people can and want to build their futures at home. The demographic window is open, but it will close. Decisions taken now…