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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…

Economic zones can be powerful drivers of economic growth in developing countries. However, less is known about their distributional impact on the local society. This paper provides empirical evidence from Indonesian provinces on the relationship…

This paper exploits time and geographic variation in the adoption of Special Economic Zones in India to assess the direct effects of the program on firm performance. We combine geocoded firm-level data and geocoded SEZs. Our analysis yields that…

Many countries introduced concepts related to Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to promote export-led economic growth. However, the concepts and implementation of SEZs vastly differ, resulting in large differences between and within countries. Therefore,…

China’s policy of encouraging export processing has been the topic of much discussion in the academic literature and policy debate. We use a recently developed econometric approach that allows for time varying “treatments” and estimate economically…

The recent move towards decoupling from China, prompted by the 2018 trade war, has implications for the innovativeness of Chinese firms. Using patent data from the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office, together with comprehensive firm-level…

Economic zones can be powerful drivers of economic growth in developing countries. However, less is known about their distributional impact on the local society. This paper provides empirical evidence from Indonesian provinces on the relationship…

This paper exploits time and geographic variation in the adoption of Special Economic Zones in India to assess the direct and spillover effects of the program. We combine geocoded firm-level data and geocoded SEZs using a concentric ring approach.…

Global foreign direct investment (FDI) has increased substantially over the past decades and so has FDI in Africa. However, still only 3 percent of global FDI stocks and 1 percent of German FDI is located in Africa. There are several policy…