The impact of Urban Enterprise Zones on establishment location decisions and labor market outcomes: evidence from France

B-Tier
Journal: Journal of Economic Geography
Year: 2017
Volume: 17
Issue: 4
Pages: 709-752

Score contribution per author:

0.670 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

In this article, we study the impact of a French enterprise zone program—the ‘Zones Franches Urbaines’ (ZFUs) policy—on establishment location decisions and on labor market outcomes. Our main identification strategy, which combines spatial and time differencing, shows that conditional on locating in a municipality that hosts a ZFU, the policy has a positive and sizable impact on the probability to locate in the ZFU part rather than in the non-ZFU part of municipalities. However, the impact is highly heterogeneous across zones, industries and firms. We also show that this positive effect is entirely due to within-municipality diversion effects. Regarding labor market outcomes, the policy has a positive effect on employment, especially for low-wage workers. As for wages, the effect is null for low-wage workers, and negative for high-wage ones.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:oup:jecgeo:v:17:y:2017:i:4:p:709-752.
Journal Field
Urban
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-25