The Impact of Pilot Policies of Low-carbon Cities on Enterprises’ Green Innovation

This paper empirically tests the impact of China’s low-carbon city pilot policy on green innovation of enterprises. The results show that the pilot policy of low-carbon cities can significantly improve the level of green innovation of enterprises, mainly in quality and quantity. The mechanism analysis shows that the pilot policy of a low-carbon city can improve the green innovation level of enterprises by relaxing the financing constraints faced by enterprises and increasing R&D investment. The heterogeneity test shows that the promotion of a low-carbon city pilot policy to green innovation of enterprises is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises, non-heavily polluting industries and large-scale enterprises. The conclusion has passed a series of robustness tests, which is of reference significance for promoting the green transformation and development of enterprises in the process of realizing the goal of “Carbon peak and Carbon neutrality” in China.