创新型城市建设政策与非试点城市创新——基于竞争效应的视角

Policies for Building Innovation-Oriented Cities and Innovation in Non-Pilot Cities—A Competition-Effect Perspective

摘要: 现有关于创新型城市建设政策对非试点地区的影响研究，大多认为非试点地区是被动接受试点城市的影响，忽略了非试点城市的主观能动性。本文以创新型城市的同省非试点城市为研究对象，基于2006~2019年209个地级市面板数据，探讨创新型城市建设政策对非试点城市创新的影响。研究发现创新型城市建设政策会对同省非试点城市产生竞争效应，促进同省非试点城市创新水平提升。逻辑基础检验显示，同省非试点城市对竞争效应进行回应，是出于“获取晋升优势”和“避免要素流失”的考虑。进一步研究发现，竞争效应对非试点城市的创新质量和创新数量都有显著激励效果，原因在于竞争效应不仅刺激了非试点城市增加财政科技支出，还提高了其知识产权保护度。异质性检验表明，官员任期影响了竞争效应的发挥，竞争效应对于主政官员处于晋升关键时期的城市的激励效果更强。本文的研究丰富了有关创新型城市建设政策外部效应的研究，也为推广和扩散创新型城市建设提供了参考和借鉴。

Abstract: Existing studies on how policies for building innovation-oriented cities affect non-pilot areas mostly portray non-pilot cities as passive recipients of spillovers from pilot cities, overlooking their own agency. Focusing on non-pilot cities located in the same province as pilot “innovation-oriented cities,” and using panel data on 209 prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2019, this paper examines the impact of Innovation-Oriented City (IOC) policies on innovation in non-pilot cities. We find that IOC policies generate a competition effect on within-province non-pilot cities, which raises their innovation levels. Mechanism tests indicate that non-pilot cities respond to this competitive pressure to gain promotion advantages and avoid factor outflows (e.g., talent and capital). Further analysis shows that the competition effect significantly boosts both the quality and the quantity of innovation, because it induces higher fiscal spending on science and technology and strengthens intellectual property rights protection. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that officials’ tenure shapes the magnitude of the competition effect: the incentive effect is stronger in cities whose principal officials are in a critical promotion window. This study enriches the literature on the external effects of innovation-oriented city policies and offers practical insights for scaling up and diffusing such policies.