You are probably right in the specific case we have in front of us.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Tue Oct 04, 2022 10:29 amThese are just re-branded freeports, aren't they?
They'll be used for warehouses, commercial property, maybe sprawling housing developments.
But if we look at the general question, then you can make an investment zone something different from a freeport. I think that in general the idea of regional policies, to encourage the development of economically backward or depressed regions, is something that makes sense. There is considerable recognition in the literature that when you have some or all of a single market, a single currency, freedom of movement of labour, across a zone, then that can result in regional inequalities building up to a greater extent than would happen when those regions were separate countries with separate currencies, separate policies, and barriers to labour mobility, etc. That is why the EU had regional development funds, to try to ameliorate that effect.
So "investment zones" can be devised as a tool of regional policy. But only if you design them that way. The main problem with development aids to a particular zone is displacement. When you devise it as a tool of regional policy, you don't mind a bit of interregional displacement, it is kind of the point. What you really don't want is localised displacement. Or something that produces no additionality at all.
Our present rulers don't seem to be trying very hard to hide their pork barrel operations. So inevitably one suspects that any idea they have in mind will be implemented as a pork barrel rather than anything useful.