abstract: 'Federal and state governments spend well over a billion dollars a year

  on programs that encourage employment development in disadvantaged labor

  markets through the use of subsidies and tax credits. In this paper we

  use an estimation approach that is valid under relatively weak

  assumptions to measure the impact of State Enterprise Zones (ENTZs),

  Federal Empowerment Zones (EMPZs), and Federal Enterprise Community

  (ENTC) programs on local labor markets. We find that all three programs

  have positive, statistically significant, impacts on local labor markets

  in terms of the unemployment rate, the poverty rate, the fraction with

  wage and salary income, and employment. Further, the effects of EMPZ and

  ENTC designation are considerably larger than the impact of ENTZ

  designation. We find that our estimates are robust to allowing for a

  regression to the mean effect. We also find that there are positive, but

  statistically insignificant, spillover effects to neighboring Census

  tracts of each of these programs. Thus our positive estimates of these

  program impacts do not simply represent a transfer from the nearest

  non-treated Census tract to the treated Census tract. Our results are

  noteworthy for several reasons. First, our study is the first to jointly

  look at these three programs, thus allowing policy makers to compare the

  impacts of these programs. Second, our paper, along with a concurrent

  study by Neumark and Kolko (2008), is the first to carry out the

  estimation accounting for overlap between the programs. Third, our

  estimation strategy is valid under weaker assumptions than those made in

  many previous studies; we consider three comparison groups and let the

  data determine the appropriate group. Fourth, in spite of our

  conservative estimation strategy, by looking at national effects with

  disaggregated data, we show that ENTZ designation generally has a

  positive effect on the local labor market, while most previous research

  on ENTZs, much of which used more geographically aggregated data to look

  at state-specific effects, did not find any significant impacts. Fifth,

  we note that there is little or no previous work on ENTCs. Overall, our

  results strongly support the efficacy of these labor market

  interventions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.'
affiliation: 'Ham, JC (Corresponding Author), Univ Maryland, IZA \& IRP UW Madison,
  College Pk, MD 20742 USA.

  Ham, John C., Univ Maryland, IZA \& IRP UW Madison, College Pk, MD 20742 USA.

  Swenson, Charles; Imrohoroglu, Ayse, Univ So Calif, Marshall Sch Business, Los Angeles,
  CA 90089 USA.'
author: Ham, John C. and Swenson, Charles and Imrohoroglu, Ayse and Song, Heonjae
author-email: john.ham.at.maryland.economics@gmail.com
author_list:
- family: Ham
  given: John C.
- family: Swenson
  given: Charles
- family: Imrohoroglu
  given: Ayse
- family: Song
  given: Heonjae
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.027
files: []
issn: 0047-2727
journal: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
keywords: 'Enterprise zones; Empowerment zones; Enterprise communities; Program

  evaluation; Disadvantaged labor markets'
keywords-plus: 'INSTRUMENTAL VARIABLES; TRAINING-PROGRAMS; PROPENSITY SCORE; JOB

  CREATION; IMPACT; EMPLOYMENT; CALIFORNIA; POLICIES'
language: English
month: AUG
number: 7-8
number-of-cited-references: '39'
pages: 779-797
papis_id: a91a44da3eda1a8c64793457e32e8de4
ref: Ham2011governmentprograms
times-cited: '111'
title: 'Government programs can improve local labor markets: Evidence from State Enterprise
  Zones, Federal Empowerment Zones and Federal Enterprise Community'
type: Article
unique-id: WOS:000291289800025
usage-count-last-180-days: '5'
usage-count-since-2013: '50'
volume: '95'
web-of-science-categories: Economics
year: '2011'