| Sustainable economic development depends on innovation,and the key to regional economic development lies in the improvement of regional innovation capabilities.The development of various places is very uneven in China,which has a huge territory,and the resource endowments and industrial bases vary significantly between the north and the south.Therefore,To promote coordinated regional development and achieve common prosperity,the key is to leverage the advantages of each region,improve regional independent innovation capabilities,and balance the economic development of the North and the South.Using the data of 281 prefecture-level cities in China(137 in the south and 144 in the north)from 2006 to 2020,this thesis first analyzes the time series analysis of the North-South economic gap and regional innovation capacity based on the change trend of North-South GDP and the change of China’s regional innovation and entrepreneurship index,and uses ARCGIS software to dynamically display the direction and correlation of the spatial evolution of North-South economy and regional innovation capacity,and the results show that the economic density and innovation ability of the North-South region have been significantly improved.However,the issue of imbalance remains severe,and the "pyramid" shape is evident,and it shows the spatial characteristics of the provincial capital city as the center,and the radiation drives the surrounding area,and the positive spillover effect is obvious.,On the basis of combing the existing research on the correlation between regional innovation and economic gap,and conducting empirical tests by the two-stage least squares method,the results show that regional innovation capacity is significantly positively correlated with North-South economic growth,that is,the improvement of regional innovation capability significantly promotes regional economic growth,coupled with the differences in resource endowment and industrial structure between the North and the South,the impact of regional innovation capability on North-South economic growth is heterogeneous,thereby widening the North-South economic gap.Secondly,taking the establishment of national innovative pilot cities as an exogenous policy impact,this thesis constructs a multi-temporal DID model,and the results show that the improvement of regional innovation capacity can promote regional economic growth,and from the perspective of regression coefficient,the improvement of innovation capacity in the southern region has the highest effect on economic growth,followed by the whole country and the smallest in the north.When the parallel trend test is carried out,it is found that the establishment of innovative pilot cities has a positive impact on economic growth,but the effect has a certain lag.The double differential results are consistent with the 2SLS regression results,that is,the improvement of regional innovation capacity widens the economic gap between the North and the South.In addition,in the heterogeneity analysis,this thesis divides the north and south regions into two administrative levels,provincial capital cities and non-provincial capital cities,and the results show that the improvement of regional innovation capacity has a greater effect on the economy of non-provincial capital cities,and the economic benefits brought by the improvement of regional innovation capacity of southern provincial capitals are lower than those brought by non-provincial capital cities.However,the impact of regional innovation capacity on provincial capitals and non-provincial capitals in northern China is not significant.When analyzing the heterogeneity of the resident population,from a national perspective,regional innovation capacity has significantly promoted the growth of regional economy,whether it is a large city or a small city.For southern cities,the promotion effect of regional innovation ability on the economic level of large cities is stronger than that of small cities,while for northern cities,some economically less developed mountainous areas and other large population bases,the improvement of regional innovation ability to the city brings economic benefits are not as good as those of cities with small population size.This thesis analyzes the mechanism of regional innovation capability on the economic gap between the North and the South by taking economic agglomeration as the intermediary variable and government intervention as the regulating variable,and finds that economic agglomeration plays an intermediary role as an intermediary variable between regional innovation capability and the North-South economic gap.Government intervention plays a regulating role as a regulating variable,and the level of government intervention has a double threshold effect between the north and south regions,that is,if the government wants to play a significant positive regulating role,it needs to further stimulate the market-oriented efficiency.Finally,this thesis introduces a spatial adjacency matrix to further examine the spatial effect of regional innovation capacity and North-South economic gap through spatial econometric model,and it is found that regional innovation capacity and North-South economy Moran’s I index are significantly positive at the level of 1%,with obvious spatial agglomeration characteristics,on the whole,the improvement of regional innovation capacity can not only promote the economic growth of the region,but also have a promoting effect on neighboring regions,and the direct effect of regional innovation ability innovation ability on the south is more significant.The indirect effect on the north is more pronounced.Based on the above conclusions,this thesis proposes that all regions should vigorously improve regional innovation capabilities,give full play to the intermediary role of economic agglomeration,advocate local governments to make appropriate policy interventions,and improve the level of regional cooperation according to local conditions,so as to narrow the economic gap between the North and the South. |
