Rhetoric versus Reality: A Review of Studies on State Enterprise Zone Programs

The Failures of Economic Development Incentives

“…In theory, enterprise zones should be one of the best forms of economic development, since they involve targeting generous incentives at small places. Wilder and Rubin's (1996) review of this literature is pessimistic. The econometric, survey, and case study research they reviewed found small or no effects in all but a few instances (most importantly, L. Papke, 1994).…”

Quasi-Experimental Analysis of Targeted Economic Development Programs: Lessons from Florida

“…The application process is overlooked in most studies of the impact of targeted program adoption (Blank, 1997;Mossberger, 2000;Wilder & Rubin, 1996). We found that the small cities were more likely to opt for EZs, suggesting, perhaps, that this type of instrument is chosen over CRAs because of the perceived lower cost of implementation or higher expected benefits.…”

The Effectiveness of State Enterprise Zones

“…However, the econometric literature on the effects of enterprise zones incentives in particular is small. While a few early studies did find enterprise zones to be effective, most of the evidence suggests that zones have almost no influence on local growth (see Wilder andRubin 1996, Fisher andPeters 1997, andFisher, forthcoming).…”