Abstract
To enhance industrial production efficiency and promote sustainable social development, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology announced the innovative industrial clusters pilot (IICP) policy and named three batches of pilot cities in 2013, 2014, and 2017. Whether this significant industrial policy has promoted green total factor productivity (GTFP) is a meaningful but under investigated question in the literature. This study thus explores the above question using a multiperiod spatial difference-in-differences approach and panel data from 273 prefecture-level cities covering 2007–2021. The super slacks based measure and Dagum Gini coefficient are first utilized to assess city-level GTFP and evaluate its spatiotemporal evolutionary features. The intraregional and interregional differences of GTFP reveal expanding trends, with contribution rates to the overall difference above 30%. Benchmark and robustness tests demonstrate promotional direct and spatial spillover effects of the IICP on GTFP. We also employ several additional tests for deeper exploration, determining that a) the direct effect of IICP gradually increases over time, with an evident a time-lag effect, and the positive spatial spillover effect has fluctuated since the policy was enforced; b) the heterogeneity effects of the IICP on GTFP was detected; c) green scientific and technological innovation is an important mechanism of how IICP implementation affects cities' GTFP; and d) the promotional effect of the IICP on GTFP significantly increases when industrial structure upgrading exceeds certain threshold values. The empirical findings of this study not only provide theoretical and practical recommendations for Chinese policymakers to enhance the IICP's policy effect, but also offer suggestions for other emerging markets to develop similar policies for sustainable social development.
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