BORDER CUSTOMS SERVICE QUALITY AS AN INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINT ON TOURISM POTENTIAL: A GENERALIZED COST FRAMEWORK AND A COMPONENT DECOMPOSITION OF THE BORDER BARRIER

The article argues that, once the entry regime has been liberalized, the quality and speed of customs services at border crossing points become the binding institutional constraint on the realization of tourism potential. A generalized-cost expression for crossing a customs border is formulated, in which monetary payments, weighted waiting and processing times, and the expected loss from inspection uncertainty are treated as separate components. The aggregate border effect identified in the gravity literature is decomposed into one attraction component and five friction components (entry regime, time, uncertainty, treatment, and information), four of which fall within the competence of the customs administration. The framework is applied to Uzbekistan, where 77.09% of the 57.69 million border crossings by individuals in 2025 occurred at road crossing points, and a system of preregistered hypotheses for empirical testing is proposed.

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