Although small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent more than 90% of all enterprises and play an important role in employment generation, they lack access to affordable formal finance. Conventionally, market failures and information imperfections are seen as majorcauses of this...

During the early years of transition output fell dramatically in almost all transitioneconomies. However, the Uzbek experience was an exception to this rule. Outputfell only slightly, soon to be followed by small but positive and persistent economicgrowth. This extraordinary performance, known...

This vital new Handbook is an authoritative volume presenting key issues in finance that have been widely discussed in the financial markets but have been neglected in textbooks and the usual compilations of conventional academic wisdom.

Research on informal financial institutions in transition economies is scant. This study investigates behaviour of urban money lenders in Uzbekistan. Money lending in Uzbekistan is a relatively new business which emerged mostly in response to targeted demand from fellow entrepreneurs during...

Although small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent more than 90% of all enterprises and play an important role in employment generation, they lack access to affordable formal finance. Conventionally, market failures and information imperfections are seen as majorcauses of this...

Uzbekistan's higher education system has undergone some dramatic changes in the past century, evolving from largely traditional religious colleges to fully state-funded communist-atheist institutions. Since the end of the communist administration and subsequent market-oriented reforms, the...

In labour surplus developing countries a strategy based on the application of the Keynesian multiplier to generate employment is constrained by the availability of resources. In some of Keynes's writings in general and those on the post-War employment and commodity policy in particular it seems...

Credit shortages are widely thought to explain the output contraction in former Soviet Union (FSU) countries during the 1990s. It is argued here that these shortages were the result of an ahistorical approach to policymaking which ignored the time needed for the establishment and further...

Using grass-roots-level data, this article analyzes factors that contribute to the current backwardness of the Uzbek banking sector. The study attempts to show that despite considerable progress achieved in terms of modernizing payments systems, embracing international accounting standards, and...