Hongmin Fan, Nan Zhang, Huihan Su

Abstract：As a new urbanization mode, smart cities provide a way to achieve the win-win situation of economic development and environmental protection. The question of whether and how smart city construction can promote the high-quality development of urban economy is worth answering. Based on measuring the Green Total Factor Productivity of 233 cities in China from 2004 to 2019, this paper takes the national pilot smart cities in China as quasi-experiment and constructs a time-varying DID model to explore the direct, dynamic and heterogeneity influence of smart city construction on GTFP. The results show that: (1)Smart city construction can significantly promote the urban GTFP, which is mainly caused by the progress of green technology, and the effect is robust after a series of robustness tests. (2)Smart city construction can contribute to GTFP improvement mainly through accelerating technological innovation, promoting industrial upgrading and realizing resource allocation optimization.(3)Smart cities with larger scale，higher administrative rank and  lying in eastern regions have stronger positive effects on GTFP. This study aims to contribute to the promotion of urban sustainable development.

Key words: smart city construction ; green total factor productivity; green economic development; time-varying DID

JEL CODES: Q56; Q58; D24; R58