Assessing the impact of special economic zones on regional growth through a comparison among EU countries

The establishment of incentive zones represents a cluster policy approach that a country can implement to boost economic growth. Being influenced by regional characteristics, the success of specific incentive types (special economic zones, free-trade zones, free zones) may vary considerably. By using a new composite indicator, differently designed according to each type of development plan, this study analyses 51 European incentive zones so as to identify best practices. Moreover, propensity score matching allows the net impact of the industrial policy to be assessed. The findings show significant positive results achieved by the various industrial policy instruments with differing levels of success.