Special Economic Designations to Enhance Economic Development

Grant Year: 2024

Jason DeBacker will lead an effort to assess the extent to which place-based policies that create incentives for investment in economically distressed areas can spur growth and improve economic conditions over the long term. He will examine whether localities designated as Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities in the 1990s experienced faster growth in output, employment, and earnings than nearby communities not included in those designations. The project’s findings will appear in a series of papers.