Abstract As a new urban development mode, smart city has attracted much attention since the pilot construction. Scientific evaluation of the role of smart city construction plays an important role in building smart city so to promote economic growth. Based on the panel data of 171 prefecture level cities in China from 2005 to 2016, on the basis of mechanism analysis, this paper uses the difference-in-differences method to test how the construction of smart city affects economic growth. The mechanism analysis shows that the construction of smart city can achieve economic growth through allocation effect, structure effect and agglomeration effect. The empirical analysis shows that compared with non-smart cities,smart city construction has significantly promoted the regional economic development of smart cities and can provide new impetus for regional economic development. On average, after the policy pilot, the economic growth of smart cities is significantly higher than that of non-smart cities by 5.4-5.9 percentage points; smart city construction uses modern information technology to improve the economy by optimizing resource allocation. The three mechanisms of agglomeration level and industrial structure upgrading drive regional economic growth; the role of smart city in promoting economic growth increases with the improvement of human capital level, the reduction of government intervention level, the improvement of financial development level and informatization level. The conclusion of this paper has an important policy meaning to continue to promote the construction of smart city and build a new urban development model to promote economic growth.
2020, Vol. 37 
