Export Processing Zones and their Constituent Firms: Over Four Decades of Research in Review

Free zones are specialized in manufacturing for exports that offer firms’ free trade conditions and a liberal regulatory environment. Despite the mounting interest of scholars and practitioners, no effort till date has been made to take stock of a large amount of literature on free zones. To fill this gap, we systematically reviewed the extant literature on free zones, following a structured approach. We reviewed 188 articles (listed in JCR) belonging to 153 different journals over a span of 46 years (1974-2023). This detailed review indicated that free zones have generally been viewed and highlighted as a policy instrument that aims to achieve socio-economic objectives. However, realizing the interest of the management scholars, this review structures the extant literature to promote scholarly dialogue on management practices and environmental implications of this revelatory industrial research site, by mapping the literature into themes, summarizing trends and identifying gaps in extant literature.