Open government data and entrepreneurship: Evidence from China

Using the establishment of open government data platforms as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ the staggered difference-in-differences model to identify the causal impact of open government data on entrepreneurship. The results show that open government data significantly promotes entrepreneurship. Mitigating institutional friction and enhancing financing accessibility are two plausible underlying mechanisms. The positive effect is more pronounced in service industries, general-administration cities, and non-resource-dependent, low-digital-infrastructure, and low-marketization regions. Furthermore, our study indicates that enhancing data quality, specifically platform usability and data comprehensiveness, is critical for maximizing entrepreneurial benefits. Finally, our study confirms that entrepreneurship induced by open government data contributes to urban economic growth. Our findings offer novel insights into how the government data openness shapes entrepreneurship.