Regional Agrifood Price Disparities and Cost Dynamics in Uzbekistan Using a Standardized Palov Ingredient Basket

Purpose – This paper investigates the time and regional dynamics of agrifood costs in Uzbekistan using a standardized basket of ingredients needed to prepare palov. It identifies the main drivers of change in the cost of the basket and assesses the persistence and sources of regional variation in cost.Design/methodology/approach – The monthly prices of eight palov ingredients are analyzed for all 14 first-level territorial units from February 2025 to July 2026. In the main sample we have 224 region-month observations that are directly observed. The analysis employs a fixed-quantity basket, cost-change decomposition, regional cost-premiums, rank-based persistence measures, spatial-dispersion measures, and covariance-based decomposition of cross-regional basket-cost variance. Robustness checks are performed on a completed panel of 252 observations.Findings – The study covers a relatively short time span and does not directly include information on transport costs, regional supply conditions, market structure, household income, or interregional trade flows. Therefore, the results should be understood as descriptive and decomposition, rather than causal. The results, however, provide useful evidence for monitoring food prices at the regional level and for identifying the products that most influence differences in food costs across Uzbekistan.Research limitations/implications – The study covers a relatively short period and does not directly include information on transport costs, regional supply conditions, market structure, household income, or interregional trade flows. Therefore, the findings should be interpreted as descriptive and decomposition rather than causal. Nevertheless, the results provide useful evidence for regional food-price monitoring and for identifying the products that have the greatest influence on differences in food costs across Uzbekistan.Originality – The paper provides a framework of fixed-meal that connects temporal cost decomposition with regional persistence and variance decomposition. It indicates that economic importance is a function of expenditure weight and regional co-movement, not proportional price dispersion.