*Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are a cornerstone of place-based industrial policy in developing economies, yet their success depends on how local labor markets adjust to new investment opportunities. Using newly assembled georeferenced data linking municipalities, firms, households, and zones, this paper exploits the staggered rollout of SEZs in Colombia between 2005 and 2018 in a difference-in-differences framework to assess their impact on local labor markets and firm dynamics. I find that, at the municipality level, SEZs increase informality without affecting total employment, indicating that the policy reallocates rather than expands local labor demand. This reallocation arises as high-skill–intensive firms entering SEZs compete for scarce skilled labor: wage pressures intensify, high-skill workers experience wage gains, and small, less-productive formal firms that cannot match rising labor costs exit the market. The resulting shift in labor demand reallocates high-skilled workers toward high-productivity firms, while displaced low-skill workers are absorbed into informal occupations. The findings reveal a distortion inherent to place-based industrial incentives: SEZs concentrate benefits among a narrow “club” of high-productivity firms, reshaping the composition of local economies and highlighting the limits of policies that rely on selective incentives.

**Extreme heat affects labor supply through increased absenteeism, lower productivity, and changes in work-time allocation. However, there is limited evidence on the role of gender as a moderating factor, even though men are more represented in outdoor and weather-exposed occupations worldwide. This paper uses microdata from urban workers in Colombia to estimate the gender-differentiated effects of extreme temperatures on short-term labor supply and time use. I find that one additional day with maximum temperatures above 33°C reduces weekly working hours for women by about 20 minutes, with no significant effect for men. In addition, women spend more time on unpaid domestic work during hot days, while men’s time allocation remains unchanged, suggesting that only employed women reallocate time from paid to unpaid activities in response to heat. I also explore the underlying factors behind these differences, examining both the direct role of occupational exposure and the indirect effects of increased caregiving demands during hot periods, which primarily constrain women's labor supply.