A Transatlantic Comparison of Enterprise Zone Impacts: The British and American Experience

Since the late 1970s, over 20 enterprise zones have been designated and are operating in Great Britain. In the United States, over 35 states have implemented an enterprise zone program. Even though some work has been done comparing the concept of enterprise zones as implemented in the United States and the United Kingdom, no research has looked at the comparative impacts of enterprise zones in these two contexts. This article analyzes the available research on zone impacts, and concludes that the U.K. zones have been largely unsuccessful in meeting program goals. In contrast, some of the state-sponsored zones in the United States have achieved a moderate degree of success. The article specifies several primary factors that help explain the moderate success of these U.S. zones. The absence of these factors in the U.K. program's structure and implementation appears to be the major determinant of the failure of the British zones.