Publication Details
Abstract
Regional comparisons of small-business competitiveness are often based on aggregate shares that are sensitive to regional scale and to the presence of large firms. This study develops the Regional Small-Business Competitiveness Index (RSNI), a transparent formative composite for the 14 regions of Uzbekistan over 2014-2024. The core index combines equally weighted internal-market (IRNI) and external-market (TRNI) subindices built from standardized, direction-adjusted intensive indicators. Robustness is examined across alternative weighting schemes, while predictive validity is tested with two-way fixed-effects regressions in which the relevant outcome component is removed from the index and the index is lagged one year. The 2024 ranking places Tashkent city first and reveals marked internal-external asymmetries across several regions. The core ranking is virtually unchanged after winsorisation (Spearman ρ = 0.996). A 10-point increase in the lagged, component-excluded index is associated with about 5.4% higher next-year sales per active firm and about 18.9% higher odds of a larger small-business export share under Driscoll-Kraay inference. Because the same coefficients are not statistically significant with region-clustered standard errors, the predictive evidence is treated as supportive rather than causal. The resulting framework provides a reproducible basis for differentiated regional diagnosis.