Abstract:

Against the backdrop of geopolitical conflicts, tariff wars and trade protectionism, as well as technological blockades causing turbulence in the global economic and trade order, China’s urban economy is undergoing a period of profound adjustment. Enhancing the resilience of urban economies has become an important topic for high-quality development. In recent years, the central government has emphasized using the certainty of high-quality development to cope with external uncertainties, and scientific and technological innovation has become an important path to enhance urban economic resilience. Based on panel data from 274 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2004 to 2023, this paper uses a double machine learning model to empirically test the impact of the national innovative city pilot policy on urban economic resilience. The research shows that: (1) Pilot policy has significantly enhanced urban economic resilience, with policy effects becoming apparent in the fourth year of the implementation and continuing to strengthen, which has also been confirmed by the robustness tests; (2) national innovative city pilot policy enhances urban economic resilience through agglomeration effects, technological innovation, and industrial structure upgrading; (3) the policy effects exhibit significant heterogeneity: they are significantly positive in non-resource-based cities, developed cities, and cities in eastern regions, insignificant in resource-based cities, less developed cities, and cities in central and western regions, and even negative in cities in the northeastern region are even negative. Thus, this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations: extend the policy cycle and enhance medium- and long-term support to fully release the lagged effects of the policy, promote the deep integration of manufacturing and services to facilitate dual upgrading of the industrial structure, place technological innovation at the core of the policy to cultivate key leverage points for enhancing urban economic resilience, and expand the pilot coverage according to local conditions to improve the accessibility and equity of the policy.

Key words: national innovative city pilot policy, urban economic resilience, population agglomeration, technological innovation, industrial structure upgrading