数字经济是赋能城市创新的新动力吗--基于272个城市的实证研究

Is Digital Economy a New Driving Force for Urban Innovation?An Empirical Research in 272 Cities

双循环新发展格局下,以数字经济带动城市创新是实施创新驱动发展战略和实现高质量发展的新思路。选取2015—2020年我国272个地级及以上城市面板数据,采用固定效应模型、门槛回归模型实证分析数字经济对城市创新的赋能效应。结果表明,数字经济能够显著提升城市创新力,且城市行政等级越高,数字经济对城市创新力的赋能效应越强,利用工具变量缓解内生性后,这一结果仍然显著。进一步研究表明,数字经济赋能城市创新存在多种门槛效应,城市数字经济发展水平和PE/VC活跃度越高,数字经济对城市创新力的赋能效应越显著。

Innovation is the first driving force leading China's economic transformation and development,and the urban innovation system is an essential part of the national innovation system.Releasing the vitality of urban innovation and improving urban innovation capacity is of great significance for accelerating the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy.Meanwhile,with the innovative breakthrough of the new generation of information and communication technology,the digital economy,as a disruptive new social and economic form,is constantly restructuring factor resources,reshaping the economic structure,and changing the competition pattern.The deep integration of digital technology and traditional industries can breed all kinds of new initiatives and new forms of business.In addition,the free flow and integration of knowledge,talent and capital in the digital economy accelerate the accumulation and advancement of urban innovation resources and contribute to the promotion of urban innovation.However,some scholars also put forward different views that with the complete penetration of the Internet into the economy,digital platforms will cause traffic and data monopolies by bilateral or multilateral market effects,thus damaging the urban innovation environment.Moreover,the leakage and abuse of data information and the impact on the traditional intellectual property protection system will lead to digital security problems and hinder the urban innovative development.Is the digital economy the"booster"or"roadblock"of urban innovation and growth?How strong is its impact on urban innovation?Will there be differences due to the development and characteristics of cities?In response to these problems,most of the relevant literature focuses on the theoretical elaboration of the realization path of digital empowerment or the empirical studies based on the actual data of western developed countries.Given the specific situation in China,an empirical study with an accurate evaluation of the role of the digital economy in urban innovation needs to be launched.This paper selects 272 cities at prefecture level and above in China from 2015 to 2020 to build the panel data and establishes an econometric model from three aspects.Firstly,the impact of the digital economy on urban innovation is evaluated by selecting a benchmark model.Secondly,the benchmark model is further estimated by introducing the interaction term to reveal the regional differences in the digital economy enabling urban innovation.Finally,a threshold model is established to describe the characteristics of the impact of the digital economy on urban innovation at different stages.The results show that the digital economy has a significant positive correlation with urban innovation which is the driving force for enabling urban innovation.Further research has confirmed that the enabling effect of the digital economy on urban innovation has regional heterogeneity,and the higher the administrative level of a city,the stronger and more significant its enabling impact.In addition,the digital economy will keep empowering urban innovation with the improvement of the city's PE/VC activity and digital status.On the basis of the systematic selection of the existing common indicators,this paper follows the relevant policy guidance,and constructs a new urban digital economy measurement indicator system that represents the differences more comprehensively in the development level of the digital economy in different cities from the multi-dimensional perspective of digital basis,digital industrialization and industrial digitalization.At the same time,this paper examines the factors affecting urban innovation from the new perspective of the digital economy.It empirically tests the regional differences and characteristics of the impact of the digital economy on urban innovation at different stages at a more detailed regional spatial scale,which not only enriches the theory of urban innovation,but also provides new evidence from China which is active in promoting urban innovation enabled by the digital economy.The research results of this paper provide practical policy implications for grasping the digital opportunities in the digital economy era and accelerating the realization of the national innovation-driven development strategy.