JESSICA initiative as a financial engineering instrument was introduced to enhance and accelerate investments in disadvantaged urban areas. The novel aspect of JESSICA is that this instrument should not only support and promote sustainable urban development but also provide incentives that lower risk capital investments and consequently allow to overcome existing market failures. Thus, the paper aims to identify whether JESSICA projects have contributed to generating positive market effects, as well as to indicate the factors that were most responsible for the occurrence of these phenomena. The results show that 75% out of all projects generated positive market effects in form of new jobs, services or products. The generation of revenues by particular project was the most influential factor determining the capacity of a given project to create positive markets effects.