Do Urban Innovation Policies Reduce Carbon Emission? Empirical Evidence from Chinese Cities with DID

Abstract

The Chinese government launched the Pilot Scheme of National Innovative Cities in 2008, and it has continued to expand the scope of the program in order to achieve more high-quality and sustainable development. This pilot scheme encourages scientific and technological innovations to solve the problems of urban development against the background of climate change by promoting the sustainable transformation and upgrading of the urban economy. This article attempts to examine whether the innovative city pilot helps improve the city’s carbon emissions. Moreover, through which mechanisms does the pilot affect the carbon emissions of Chinese cities? The authors use the Pilot Scheme of National Innovative Cities as a quasi-natural experiment and apply the difference-in-difference (DID) method to investigate the impact of innovative city pilot policy on the carbon emissions of pilot cities and the underlying mechanisms.