HUMAN CAPITAL AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC GROWTH: A PANEL ANALYSIS OF THE LUCAS-UZAWA MODEL FOR THE REGIONS OF UZBEKISTAN

The paper estimates the effect of human capital on regional growth in Uzbekistan, and its external effect, during the rapid expansion of higher education after 2017. A Lucas–Uzawa production function is estimated on a panel of 14 regions for 2010–2024 with region and year fixed effects and Driscoll–Kraay standard errors. A 10 % rise in the stock of university graduates per worker raises real gross regional product (GRP) per worker by 3.9 % (elasticity 0.391, p = 0.003). With a Mincer-consistent measure, the social return to a one-percentage-point increase in the graduate share (4.2–5.0 %) is several times the private return (0.55 %), indicating sizeable externalities. Yet regions diverge: the σ-dispersion rose from 0.371 in 2016 to 0.419 in 2024, and weak convergence appears only conditional on the level of human capital. In Surkhandarya region, human capital accounts for 40.8 % of the growth of real GRP per worker in 2013–2024; raising its graduate stock to the regional average could increase GRP per worker by about 31 %.