Special Economic Zones: Efficient or Not?

Abstract

The article discusses issues of the existing approaches to evaluating efficiency of special economic zones (SEZ). It is shown that it is wrong to evaluate all of the SEZ as a whole, and the results of each particular SEZ depend on its type, geographic location, infrastructure funding, tax incentives and sectoral structure of the regional economy. The performance lack of SEZ is determined not only by its features but also by general economic problems: the shortcomings of the federal investments procedures (including project selection), sub-optimal division of powers between federal and regional authorities and the duplication of federal tools to support investors. Therefore it is necessary to take into account the aforementioned factors to improve the performance of SEZ, but not eliminate them

Keywords

• special economic zones
• efficiency evaluation methods
• federal investment
• preferential investment regime
• SEZ residents
• SEZ types
• economic and geographical position
• subjects of the Russian Federation
• Russia