地铁开通、知识溢出与城市创新——来自中国289个地级市层面的证据

Metro Opening,Knowledge Spillovers and Urban Innovation:Evidence from 289 Prefecture-level Cities in China

地铁开通能有效促进人们的交流,本文使用2001—2016年289个地级市面板数据,运用双重差分模型研究了地铁开通对城市创新的影响机理。研究发现,地铁开通显著提升了城市创新水平,能解释同时期城市创新水平变化的24.13%,且结果高度稳健。机制分析表明,地铁开通后导致的校企联系增加、诱使的人力资本和FDI流入,是解释其提高城市创新水平的重要机制,这种机制可能有助于缓解当前中国“西低东高”的区域创新格局。本文研究结论为政府如何利用地铁网络引导区域创新要素合理流动提供了经验层面的证据,同时为缓解当前中国区域发展不平衡提供政策建议。

Metro opening can effectively promote people’s communication,and this paper investigates the influence mechanism of metro opening on urban innovation by means of the difference in differences based on the panel data of 289 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2001 to 2016.It is found that metro opening significantly enhances urban innovation,explaining 24.13%of the change in urban innovation level over the same period,and the results are robust.The mechanism analysis suggests that the increase in university-enterprise linkages and the inflow of human capital and FDI resulting from the metro opening are important mechanisms explaining the improvement of urban innovation,which may help to alleviate the current regional innovation pattern of being low in west China and high in the east.The findings of this paper provide empirical evidence on how the government can use metro networks to guide the rational flow of regional innovation factors,as well as some policy recommendations for alleviating the current regional development imbalance in China.