Historical Legacies of Regional Differences in Economic Performance of Central Asia Regions

This paper is devoted to the study of the Central Asian region, the establishment of similarities and differences in the economic development of the countries of Central Asia and the identification of the reasons that influence heterogeneity. A study of foreign works shows that geographical, historical, climatic, cultural factors, as well as technological development, physical and human capital have left their mark on the development of Central Asia. In the paper the effect of the resettlement of Russian people until 1926 in the Central Asian region on the modern economic development of the region is examined. The peculiarity of this work is that the parameters of regional economic development are indicators as the region’s illumination of the region at night, the speed of Internet-connection, the total number of enterprises and institutions in the studied regions. The model of the three-step least squares (3SLS) method used in this work allows us to establish the positive impact of resettled Russian people according to the 1926 population census on the current level of economic development in Central Asia, as well as to identify the reasons for the resettlement of Russian people in certain regions using the method of instrumental variables (IV).