The Impact Of Smart City Pilot Policy On Total Factor Productivity

Since the reform and opening up,the rapid urbanization and the lagging development of urban governance have caused many problems such as environmental pollution,traffic congestion,and excessive consumption of resources,and residents’ production and life have been seriously threatened.The traditional urban development model is no longer able to cope with such problems,and society urgently needs a "cure" to solve the current governance problems.Unlike the traditional model,the smart city has become an important pilot initiative to enhance the sustainable development of cities by relying on the new generation of information integration technology,and it is of great practical value to objectively evaluate its impact on total factor productivity.In this paper,from the perspective of both cities and enterprises,we firstly explain the mechanism of smart city construction on total factor productivity,and divide the new innovation drive of smart cities into technology effect,structural effect and resource allocation effect according to the "Porter hypothesis" innovation drive theory.Second,based on the macro-data of prefecture-level cities and micro-data of listed industrial enterprises,the impact effects and mechanisms of smart city construction were tested empirically by constructing multi-period double difference model,dynamic effect model,spatial DID model and mediating effect model,while propensity score double difference model(PSM-DID),placebo test and other methods to corroborate the validity of the findings.Finally,the heterogeneity of the impact effects of smart city construction was explored in depth based on the distinction between city and enterprise characteristics.The following conclusions are drawn from the above analysis:(1)Smart city pilot policy has a significant promotion effect on the total factor productivity of cities and enterprises and the promotion effect is increasing year by year,while the research findings are still valid considering the spatial spillover effect and a series of robustness tests.(2)Smart city pilot policy promotes total factor productivity of cities and enterprises mainly through the effects of technological progress,industrial structure upgrading and optimal resource allocation.(3)There is heterogeneity in the promotion effects of smart cities.From the perspective of cities,the promotion effect is more obvious in eastern cities,large-scale cities,cities with high human capital and high information infrastructure;from the perspective of enterprises,enterprises in eastern cities,medium-sized enterprises and state-owned enterprises are more sensitive to pilot policies.Based on this,three policy suggestions are proposed:(1)Actively promote the pilot implementation of smart city;(2)Vigorously develop science and technology to boost the development of smart city;(3)Pilot smart cities based on local conditions and balanced development.