智慧城市试点政策能否助推城市创新水平提升?——基于多时点DID的实证研究

Whether the Smart City Pilot Policy has Improved the Innovation Level of the City?:An Empirical Study Based on the Time-varying DID

当前我国已进入高质量发展阶段,创新、协调、绿色、开放、共享的新发展理念是未来经济发展的重要引领,城市作为创新活动的主要空间载体,其创新水平的提升是国家高质量发展的关键动力。智慧城市的建设作为党中央探索未来城市发展方向的积极实践,其建设蓝图与新发展理念不谋而合。自2012年我国首次实施智慧城市试点政策以来,共有三期290个城市(区、县)成为建设试点,探究智慧城市试点政策与城市创新水平之间的关系及其影响机制对于后续政策的完善和智慧城市建设具有重大意义。基于198个城市2009—2016年的面板数据,利用多时点双重倍差法(time-varying difference-in-difference)进行了研究。结果表明智慧城市的试点政策通过增加城市科技投入、优化信息基础设施,有效助推了城市创新水平的提升,且政策效果随时间推移逐渐增强。同时,对于城市等级、区位和初始创新水平不同的城市而言,政策效果有显著差异性。未来,智慧城市建设应注重改善创新生态,加强信息基础设施建设和科技投入,培育战略性新兴产业,同时要因地制宜,实现城市创新水平的提升。

At present,China has entered a high-quality development stage,and innovation plays a more prominent role as the core driving force leading China’s high-quality economic development.As the main battle field of national economy and the main space carrier of scientific and technological innovation activities,the task of improving the level of innovation is particularly important.With the development of information and communication technology(ICT),the concept of smart city has been realized.The development direction of smart city coincides with the new development concept.China also officially started the pilot of smart city in 2012 and made large-scale investment.However,whether smart city construction can promote the innovation level of the city is still in doubt.On the one hand,the impact of ICT use and development on innovation is controversial,on the other hand,the research on the impact of infrastructure construction on regional innovation output is also controversial.In this context,it is necessary to test the role of smart city pilot policies on urban innovation level.The research object is prefecture level cities in China from 2009 to 2016,and cities with only some districts and counties as the main pilot areas and cities with more missing values are deleted.The smart city pilot policy is divided into three batches.For the evaluation of multiple batches of policies,this research uses Time-varying difference-in-difference method to study.The main explanatory variable is the level of urban innovation,which comes from the FIND Report on City and Industrial Innovation in China;The main explanatory variable is the virtual variable of policy pilot,which is determined as 0 or 1 by whether the city accepts the policy impact at a certain time point.The research process is as follows:firstly,without adding control variables,carry out two-way fixed effect regression,and then add a series of control variables to regression to obtain the impact of pilot policies on urban innovation level;Furthermore,through the construction of cross items,this article studies the heterogeneity of pilot policies on urban innovation from the perspective of urban grade,location,initial innovation conditions and construction time;Finally,by constructing the intermediary effect model,this research explores the impact path of the pilot policy on urban innovation from two aspects:information infrastructure and science and technology investment.The results show that the smart city pilot policy can improve the level of urban innovation regardless of whether the control variable is added or not;In terms of heterogeneity analysis,the study found that the pilot policy has a stronger stimulating effect on cities with higher administrative levels and cities located in the east,the promoting effect of the pilot policy on urban innovation increases with time,and the pilot policy can reduce the gap of urban initial innovation level;In terms of impact path,the pilot policy has driven the improvement of urban innovation ability by increasing information infrastructure construction and government science and technology investment,and the former has a greater impact on urban innovation ability.On the whole,under the background of innovation driven development strategy and new development concept,the significance of smart city for China’s exploration of future urban form is self-evident.The role of smart city in promoting innovation meets the needs of urban development and meets the strategic objectives of China’s development.Continuously promoting the construction of smart city will become a booster for China to achieve high-quality development.