IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2026-91.html

Do Special Economic Zones foster economic development?: Evidence from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Amalitinga Abagna
  • Ronald B. Davies
  • Nadine Riedel
  • Nora Strecker
  • Biniyam Gezahegn Worku

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as instruments of economic development in South Africa. Drawing on rich administrative tax data and employing a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we examine how SEZ participation affects firm-level outcomes, including exports, investment, employment, and productivity. Contrary to the common expectation that SEZ participation boosts firm performance, the results suggest that SEZ firms generally underperform their non-SEZ counterparts.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Amalitinga Abagna & Ronald B. Davies & Nadine Riedel & Nora Strecker & Biniyam Gezahegn Worku, 2026. "Do Special Economic Zones foster economic development?: Evidence from South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2026-91, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2026-91
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2026-91-do-special-economic-zones-foster-economic-development.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2026-91. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.