The impact of technology finance pilot policies on the quality of urban entrepreneurship in China

To accelerate the rapid development of financial markets and achieve independent control over core technological advancements, the Chinese government has introduced numerous policies supporting the integrated development of technology and finance. The effectiveness of these policies has garnered significant attention from both the government and technology enterprises. Based on panel data from 279 prefecture-level cities in China from 2000 to 2021, this study leverages the pilot policy of “Promoting the Integration of Technology and Finance” as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a Synthetic Control Difference-in-Differences (SCM-DID) model to empirically analyze the impact of technology finance policies on the quality of entrepreneurship in pilot cities. The findings reveal that technology finance policies significantly enhance urban entrepreneurial quality, and this conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness tests. Additionally, the effects of these policies exhibit regional heterogeneity across four dimensions: geographical location, Administrative divisions, education level and urban clusters. Mechanism analysis further indicates that technology finance policies indirectly promote urban entrepreneurial quality by influencing fiscal investment in science and technology as well as talent-driven innovation and entrepreneurship. Based on these findings, this paper proposes targeted policy recommendations. The conclusions provide a new analytical perspective for driving urban entrepreneurial quality while also offering theoretical support and decision-making references for further improving the technology finance policy framework.