The growth performance of small, land-locked Central Asian economies has been among the world's fastest since the 1990s due to high-priced commodities (including oil and natural gas), strategic location, reasonable infrastructure, and human capital. The short-term economic prospects of Central...

"Recent attempts to measure competitiveness across countries have typically neglected the world's smallest economies. Hence, a simple composite index, the small state manufactured export competitiveness index or SSMECI, was developed to benchmark industrial competitiveness. The SSMECI represents...