Can Tax Breaks Beat Geography? Lessons from the French Enterprise Zone Experience

This paper demonstrates that geography matters to the effectiveness of place-based policies, using the French enterprise zone program as a case study. Using a series of indicators of spatial isolation for treated and non treated neighborhoods, we show that geographical heterogeneity determines the ability of the program to impact firms’ settlements, job creation and earnings. In particular, whereas a focus on the average impact of the program would lead to the conclusion that it mostly succeeded in displacing pre-existing firms, a lower level of spatial isolation was a clear determinant of the decision to create new firms from scratch.