Toward Economically Dynamic Special Economic Zones in Emerging Countries

Abstract

the editors of the article, as well as three anonymous reviewers for their thorough comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the article. Elliot Rasmuson, Keith Garrett, Egle Pugaciauskaite, Le Duy Binh and his team, Hanane Lahnaoui, Ding Xu, and Benjamin Stewart provided invaluable support in assembling the different data sets. Tom Farole and Douglas Zeng gave generous advice throughout the project. We also would like to thank all participants of the World Bank Brown Bag Lunch discussion in Washington, DC-in particular Thomas Farole and Leonardo Iacovone, who acted as peer reviewers-and in seminars and conferences in Stavanger, Tokyo, Vancouver and Vienna. The research was conducted under the auspices of the Competitive Industries and Innovation Program of the World Bank.

Place‐based policies, firm productivity, and displacement effects: Evidence from Shenzhen, China

“…Third, we contribute to the understanding of important differences in the role of place‐based policies in developed countries on the one hand, and transition countries on the other hand. While almost unstudied, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, and many other transition countries extensively use place‐based policies, science parks, and special economic zones to promote development (Frick et al, ). The empirical evidence to date is therefore arguably not representative of many of the place‐based policies that are in place worldwide.…”

“…The welfare and productivity effects in science parks can be remarkably large, as shown in our research. Yet, this does not mean it should be unambiguously promoted elsewhere: they could inhibit decline in nearby regions and their effectiveness could strongly depend on the local context (Frick et al, ). Policy efforts for continued investment and productive impact of science parks may not suffice for balanced economic development: our analyses also show that science parks may lead to displacement effects on labor that are large compared with many previous studies.…”

“…While almost unstudied, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, and many other transition economies extensively apply place‐based policies and special economic zones to promote development. A scarcity of data on productivity and employment creation is argued to hamper strong conclusions on place‐based policies in these economies (Frick, Rodríguez‐Pose, & Wong, ). Recently though, difference‐in‐difference evidence on the establishment of Special Economic Zones in China suggests positive but heterogeneous effects on productivity (Alder, Shao, & Zilibotti, ; Wang, ).…”

Preparing Fertile Ground: How Does the Business Environment Affect Outcomes From Microfinance?

“…Finally, as highlighted by a recent study by Frick et al (2018), despite the proliferation of SEZs, there has been virtually no quantitative research on what drives their dynamism. They posit that various factors related to the business environment context (including access to markets, human capital, and population density) and SEZ characteristics (including maturity, size, public or private operators, industry focus, infrastructure, and services offered) will have an important influence on the intensity of the dynamic effects from SEZs.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, ours is thus the first study which attempts to estimate dynamic linkage and spillover effects on local micro-and small enterprise-level outcomes in a developing country context. Moreover, ours is only the second study after Frick et al (2018), to empirically study how different SEZ and territorial factors may influence the intensity of dynamic effects, where we again differ in using enterprise-level outcomes. By contract, Frick et al (2018) use territorial nightlight data as a more general proxy for capturing changes in economic activity.…”