Has Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone Policy Improved New Quality Productive Forces? Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on Green Finance Reform and the Innovation Pilot Zone

Using green finance reform and innovation pilot zone policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this study uses different methods to explore whether the policy implementation has improved new quality productivity in Chinese cities at the prefecture level and above. The results show that green finance reform and innovation pilot zone policy can significantly improve the level of regional new quality productivity, and the results are robust. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that green finance reform and innovation pilot zone policy have heterogeneous impacts on the latest quality productivity of cities in different regions, scales, environmental regulatory intensities, financial development levels, and administrative levels. The parallel trend sensitivity test and function form robustness test further support the conclusions of this paper. Finally, suggestions are put forward to enhance green finance policies further.