Yerken Turganbayev – Regional Disparities in Kazakhstan

Economic development in Kazakhstan was accompanied by increasing disparities across the country’s various regions, which has contributed to a number of social and economic problems. The urgency to find a solution to these problems has made research into the dynamics of regional inequality a hot issue for both policymakers and economists, even more so today because of the current economic difficulties caused by the fall of oil and other raw commodities prices. This presentation will discuss regional economic development in Kazakhstan, Astana’s regional policy, and current economic perspectives for the various regions of the country.

Yerken Turganbayev received a PhD in Economics at the Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen, UK) and a PhD in Mathematics at the Novosibirsk State University (Novosibirsk, Russia). His research interests lie in the application of a mathematical modeling approach to various problems in economics and environment protection. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.