urban enterprise zone: see enterprise zone.

free enterprise system: see capitalism.

enterprise zone, designated geographical district in which resident businesses are legally entitled to receive special benefits from a government, established in economically depressed areas to encourage companies to locate there. Most states enacted enterprise zone programs during the 1980s, and changes in the federal tax code in 1993 instituted tax incentives for businesses in certain locations, sometimes referred to as empowerment zones. Typical incentives offered to attract businesses to enterprise zones include tax credits, subsidized loans, and reduced regulations. Although usually associated with urban areas, enterprise zones have also been set up in rural areas. Most enterprise zones have only been marginally successful in reviving the areas in which they are located, in part because businesses located in such zones often employ workers who live outside the area.

Enterprise, city (1990 pop. 20,123), Coffee co., SE Ala.; inc. 1896. It is a peanut-shipping center with many peanut-processing establishments. There are also lumber and textile mills and plants that make concrete. The region's diversified farming began after the boll weevil destroyed (1910-15) the cotton; in gratitude for the resulting prosperity, the city erected (1919) a monument to the boll weevil.

or free-market economy or free-enterprise system

Economic system in which most of the means of production are privately owned, and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets. Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of mercantilism. It was fostered by the Reformation, which sanctioned hard work and frugality, and by the rise of industry during the Industrial Revolution, especially the English textile industry (16th–18th centuries). Unlike earlier systems, capitalism used the excess of production over consumption to enlarge productive capacity rather than investing it in economically unproductive enterprises such as palaces or cathedrals. The strong national states of the mercantilist era provided the social conditions, such as uniform monetary systems and legal codes, necessary for the rise of capitalism. The ideology of classical capitalism was expressed in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), and Smith's free-market theories were widely adopted in the 19th century. In the 20th century the Great Depression effectively ended laissez-faire economics in most countries, but the demise of the state-run command economies of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (see communism) and the adoption of some free-market principles in China left capitalism unrivaled (if not untroubled) by the beginning of the 21st century.

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