Welcome to my website!

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the University of Pittsburgh.

I study the cultural and institutional forces that shape why some societies prosper while others fall behind. I combine unique datasets with quasi-experimental methods and large-scale computational text analysis to bring credible causal evidence to questions that have long resisted empirical study.

I come from Uzbekistan, specifically from the Ferghana Valley, a fertile and densely populated basin that has been a crossroads of the Silk Road for centuries. Outside of research, I am big into soccer and chess, and I am always happy to talk about either.