Using a unique firm-level data for Polish Special Economic Zones (SEZ) to estimate a set of panel data models we find that both employment and investment growth in SEZ are driven mainly by labour market characteristics of zone-hosting regions, while other factors (including market access, zone business climate and firms' concentration) play a less important role. Firms choose their locations based on labour availability rather than on labour costs. Moreover, they pay particular attention to availability of low-skilled rather than high-skilled labour. As far as tax incentives are concerned, their predictability matters more for SEZ development than their generosity.
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Ciżkowicz et al. (2020) studied this question.
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