The impact of enterprise zone tax incentives on local property markets in England: who actually benefits?

Research on the impact of property taxes on local real estate markets has a long history in the urban economics literature but few studies have considered this issue in the context of the commercial real estate market or on data from outside the USA. This is surprising given the use which governments make of property tax exemptions to assist local regeneration with the UK Government recently announcing some 24 new enterprise zones (EZs) in England. In this study we use a novel data-set on commercial real estate leases to investigate the incidence of the local property tax savings. Our data-set covers both taxed and tax exempt areas during the operation of the EZ designations in the UK. Our findings show that a large part of the tax savings appears to be captured in higher rents charged by landlords.