Over the past few decades, special economic zones (SEZs) have become a widely used industrial policy tool to support structural transformation and economic development. Yet their impact on the economy remains inconclusive, especially in developing countries where the lack of data presents a...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of a prominent place-based policy - Special Economic Zones (SEZs) - on the economic well-being of African households. We compile a novel dataset on repeated cross-sections of households living in various distance bands around SEZs in 10...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of a prominent placebased policy - Special Economic Zones (SEZs) - on the economic well-being of African households. We compile a novel dataset on repeated cross-sections of households living in various distance bands around SEZs in 10 African...

This paper provides novel evidence on the impact of a prominent place-based policy – Special Economic Zones (SEZs) – on the economic well-being of African households. Exploiting time variation in SEZ establishment on a dataset of repeated cross-sections of households in 10 African countries...

We study the effects of place-based policies on aggregate productivity using administrative data on projects co-financed by the EU in Italy linked to balance sheet data. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in funding for a large place-based policy stemming from measurement error in regional...

We study the effects of place-based policies on aggregate productivity using administrative data on projects co-financed by the EU in Italy linked to balance sheet data. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in funding for a large place-based policy stemming from measurement error in regional...

This paper establishes the linkage between place-based policies and growth from the perspective of regional innovation, using China as a case study. Leveraging extensive data on special economic zones (SEZs) and patent data, I examine the causal effects and underlying channels of SEZ...