Whether The Digital Development Of Cities Promotes Enterprise Innovation

China’s achievements in economic development have attracted worldwide attention,but they stem from the country’s huge demographic dividend and spur investment,and are not a long-term solution to sustaining economic growth.At the same time,due to the continuous impact of COVID-19 on the recovery of the world economy and the escalation of the great power game,China’s scientific and technological development has frequently faced problems such as the "stuck neck"dilemma,resulting in more urgent requirements for accelerating scientific and technological innovation.Being the main body of socialist market economy,micro-enterprises are the main carriers of scientific and technological innovation.The digital age has brought with it digital technologies such as big data,artificial intelligence and cloud computing.It has gradually deepened the integration with the real economy,promoted the upgrading of industrial transformation,strengthened the docking of enterprises,enterprises and markets,increased the efficiency of innovation and expanded the space for innovation.The development of Chinese enterprises in this information revolution is fundamentally synchronized with the international community,compared to the previous industrial revolutions.To meet this great opportunity,Chinese enterprises should take advantage of the huge domestic market and continuous government innovation and development initiatives,seize the opportunity window to "overtake",transform their accumulated years of technological experience into independent innovation and realize leapfrog development.In recent years,the state has frequently introduced policies to help enterprises,encouraging them to innovate on their own and improve their level of innovation by reducing taxes and fees,promoting the introduction of talents and creating science and technology innovation platforms.In the context of the deepening digital transformation and the increasing demand for innovation development,this paper takes the impact of macro policies on micro enterprise innovation as a perspective,compares previous scholars’ research in this field and analyses the mechanism of urban digital development on enterprise innovation on this basis,and puts forward three theoretical hypotheses:(1)digital development has a positive incentive effect on enterprise innovation;(2)urban digital development has a positive impact on enterprise innovation through three mechanisms:enterprise financing constraints,total factor productivity and government governance efficiency;and(3)the innovation incentive effect of urban digital development has heterogeneous effects on different enterprises.Empirically,this paper examines the impact of the pilot policy of digital city management on firm innovation and its mechanism of action using a multi-period double difference method based on the data of A-share listed companies from 2002 to 2012,taking the pilot policy of digital city management implemented by the Ministry of Housing and Construction in 2005,2006 and 2007 as an entry point and treating it as a quasi-natural experiment.It was found that the pilot policy of digital city management significantly increased the total number of patent applications of listed companies,which implies that the pilot policy has improved corporate innovation to some extent.The results of a series of robustness tests such as continuing to include other fixed effects,changing regression models,placebo tests,identifying other policy disturbances and PSM-DID estimation indicate the reliability of the empirical study and the core findings of this paper.The results of the mechanism test indicate that the pilot policy has promoted the level of corporate innovation mainly by alleviating corporate financing constraints,enhancing corporate total factor productivity and improving government governance efficiency.The final heterogeneity test results found that the pilot policy had a greater impact on the innovation level of manufacturing enterprises,non-state enterprises,enterprises in cities with lower levels of science and education,and enterprises in high-tech industries.In light of the above research findings,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations:(1)Accelerating digital development of cities and promoting the improvement of enterprise innovation levels.Continuing to promote digital transformation and accelerating the construction of digital infrastructures is the basis for deepening the integration and development of digital technology and real economy,and digital transformation should be used to stimulate changes in production methods and empower enterprises for innovation and development.(2)Optimizing the environment for entrepreneurship and innovation in enterprises.Development directions clearly outlined in the 14th Five Year Plan and Vision 2035 are the optimization of the enterprise R&D and innovation environment by guiding the marketization of technological innovation,improving the IP protection system,and improving the effectiveness of government department supervision.The only way to improve the innovation capability and increase the innovation output of enterprises is to optimize the system and improve the enterprise innovation environment,and to fundamentally stimulate the innovation enthusiasm of companies.(3)To implement policies in a targeted manner,expand their impact,make them more inclusive,establish a system of policies and regulations appropriate to digital development,improve all institutional norms and improve the efficiency of policy.