1. Measurement and common news sample
Trade policy uncertainty affects expectations about cross-border transaction costs, while institutional cooperation changes trading conditions through agreements, customs facilitation and infrastructure connectivity. CA-TPU and CA-TECI measure these two dimensions using 3,084,775 Russian-language articles from eight outlets in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The monthly series cover January 2013 to September 2026 and are normalized to a 2015–2019 mean of 100.
2. Central Asia Trade Policy Uncertainty Index (CA-TPU)
Following Baker, Bloom and Davis (2016), CA-TPU identifies articles that contain keywords in each of three categories: trade (), policy () and uncertainty (). The numerator counts articles in the intersection; the denominator counts articles in the union:
where denotes lagged annual foreign-trade weights (2026 weights: Kazakhstan 57.18%, Uzbekistan 32.27%, Kyrgyzstan 6.28%, Tajikistan 4.27%).
3. Central Asia Trade and Economic Cooperation Index (CA-TECI)
CA-TECI uses 49 groups of Russian word stems to identify trade, policy and cooperation. Articles on domestic municipal utility charges, including heating, water, electricity and urban transit, are excluded from the reference sample:
| Dimension | Clusters | Scope and representative Russian stems |
|---|---|---|
| T: Cross-border trade | 12 clusters | Exports, imports, trade turnover (экспорт*, импорт*, товарооборот*, внешнеторгов*), customs & transit corridors (тамож*, пошлин*, коридор*, транзит*, логист*, границ*, ВТО/ЕАЭС), excluding municipal utility tariffs. |
| P: Government and multilateral policy | 12 clusters | Executive authorities and ministries (президент*, правительств*, министерств*, ведомств*), legislation & decrees (закон*, указ*, постановлен*, регламент*), intergovernmental commissions (комисси*, комитет*, делегац*, межправительствен*). |
| C: Trade and economic cooperation | 25 clusters | Partitioned into: (i) Formal agreements and institutional cooperation (, 13 clusters): соглашен*, договор*, меморандум*, ратификац*, свободн* торгов*, зелён* коридор*, совместн* предприят*; and (ii) Bilateral consultation and facilitation (, 12 clusters): сотрудничеств*, партнёрств*, переговоры, упрощен*, интеграц*, форум*. |
3.1 Reference sample, exclusion rules and aggregation
KEY ECONOMETRIC FINDINGS
Key econometric findings
Local projections associate higher CA-TPU with export contraction and higher CA-TECI with export expansion.
Cooperation and export expansion
h = 6 · p < 0.01
A one-standard-deviation increase in CA-TECI is associated with a cumulative export increase of 16.6% at six months, controlling for exchange rates, commodity prices, destination industrial output and seasonality.
Market entry and the extensive margin
h = 3 · intensive margin: 36.3%
New product–destination relationships account for most early export growth, consistent with lower fixed compliance costs through agreements and trade facilitation.
Physical shipment growth
h = 3 · 94.0% at h = 6
Decomposing export value into net weight and unit value attributes most expansion to greater shipment volumes, supporting cross-border goods flows as a channel linking cooperation to trade.
4. Human validation and correlation between the indices
Evaluated on a Horvitz-Thompson stratified sample of 600 Russian articles, CA-TECI achieves 86.7% inverse-probability-weighted precision, 86.2% recall, , and Cohen's (compared with for CA-TPU). On the shared international trade policy denominator (), CA-TECI correlates negatively with broad CA-TPU () and the net CA-TPU series (excluding cooperation articles) ().