Estimating the Economic Effects of Opportunity Zones in Georgia

As part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the United States Congress created Opportunity Zones, an economic-development tool that provides preferential tax treatment for investments made in certain designated places. These places must meet eligibility criteria related to income levels or poverty rates, and must be nominated by the governor of the state in which they are located. The TCJA set an expiration date for the program of December 31, 2026. However, in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) Congress both made the program permanent and provided for 10-year designation cycles beginning in 2027.

The Georgia Public Policy Foundation focuses our work on state-level policy and, as such, does not typically comment on federal policy. We take no position on the Opportunity Zone program itself. However, because it is up to the state government to nominate the places that will be deemed Opportunity Zones and thus eligible for the preferential tax treatment, we thought it was worth asking whether it would be more beneficial for Gov. Brian Kemp to renominate existing tracts or nominate new ones. To answer this question, we partnered with Keystone Strategy, a firm with experience in this field, to review both the academic literature related to place-based incentives and the data for Georgia’s current Opportunity Zones.

Through its review of the evidence and its original empirical analysis of Georgia’s Opportunity Zones, Keystone finds “that the program has improved economic outcomes, including household income, employment, and unemployment rates, and enterprise sales since its implementation in 2018.” It further recommends that “the potential of the policy to generate positive economic impacts has not been fully realized and would benefit from decision making which stabilizes the policy over a longer period. Redesignating eligible tracts is likely to generate greater long-run benefits than shifting designation to previously non-designated tracts.”