African countries have sought to replicate the success of East Asia by implementing special economic zones. Despite decades of international experience, there remains no blueprint for successful special economic zone policies, and the majority of special economic zones fall well below...

Chinese city-level data indicate that differences in growth rates are far more severe than indicated in previous studies which typically use data at higher levels of aggregation. We estimate growth equations using city-level data and find that the policy of awarding a special economic zone...