Abstract: As a strategic tool to achieving high-quality economic development, innovation policy plays an important role in integrating technological innovation resources, leading the innovative allocation of production factors, and accelerating the formation of new quality productive forces. Innovation policy has a direct effect in reallocation and utilization of innovative production factors, while in the meantime cities are gathering places for innovative factors. Therefore, it is essentially important to examine the impact of innovation policy on urban total factor productivity from the perspective of formation of urban new quality productivity. Since 2008, under the strategy of Innovative Country Building Plan in China, Shenzhen was approved to be the first innovative city pilot. After that, the city government paid more attention in technological and industrial innovation as well as received huge resources investment from central government. The huge success of Shenzhen has led the central government to decide to continue diffusing this pilot policy in other cities. By the end of 2023, a total of 103 cities have become pilot cities, and have been included in the monitoring and evaluation of urban innovation capabilities by central government. However, there is little empirical literature to systematically study whether this policy can promote the growth of urban total factor productivity, its mechanism of action, and whether there are regional differences. Regarding the national innovative city pilot policy as a quasi-experiment, the paper evaluates the impact of innovative policies represented by the construction of innovative city pilot policy on the growth of urban total factor productivity. Research has found that pilot policies can promote the formation of urban new quality productive forces in with a significant increase in total factor productivity as the core. Mechanism analysis shows that an increase in the proportion of government research and design expenditure, economic agglomeration, and improvement of the business environment are important mechanisms for pilot policies to promote the development of new quality productive forces in cities. Heterogeneity analysis shows that pilot policies have a stronger promoting effect on the new quality productive forces in middle and northern cities, but it turns out that the effect on improving the total factor productive forces in western cities is not significant. This indicates that pilot policies are conducive to promoting economic convergence between the north and south, but it still has a long way to go as to boosting developing in western cities and coordinating and narrowing the development of East-Middle-West gap. This paper evaluates the impact of innovation policies on the growth rate of urban total factor productivity, and makes new knowledge contributions to the generation of new quality productive forces theory under the framework of innovation economics and high-quality development. Besides, the government expenditure effect, economic agglomeration effect, and high-tech enterprise innovation effect that promote the formation of urban new quality productivity, as well as the improvement of the business environment, are included in a common analytical framework to clarify the mechanism by which the construction of innovative cities drives the formation of urban new quality productive forces. In conclusion, this paper not only deepens the policy effect evaluation of innovative cities, but also systematically reveals the meso mechanism of innovation policies promoting the development of new quality productivity, providing empirical evidence support for the expansion of new quality productive forces theory under the framework of innovation economics and high-quality development.

摘要： 创新型城市试点政策，是创新型国家建设战略背景下打造区域创新增长极，推动城市新质生产力形成与发展的重要政策工具。然而，这一政策能否促进城市全要素生产率增长，其作用机制为何，以及是否存在区域差异，鲜有实证文献加以系统性的研究。本文基于国家创新型城市试点政策的准自然实验，使用双重差分法评估了以创新型城市建设为代表的创新政策对城市全要素生产率增长的影响。研究发现：试点政策能够促进以全要素生产率显著提高为核心的城市新质生产力形成。机制分析表明，政府科技支出占比增加，经济集聚和营商环境改善是试点政策促进城市新质生产力发展的重要机制。异质性分析表明，试点政策对于中部和北方城市新质生产力的促进作用更强，但对西部城市全要素生产率的提升效果不显著，这表明试点政策有利于促进南北经济趋同，但与西部大开发战略的宏观取向一致性有待加强。本研究深化了创新型城市的政策效应评估，系统揭示了创新政策促进新质生产力发展的中观机制，为创新经济学和高质量发展框架下新质生产力理论的拓展提供了经验证据支撑。