关键词: 金融网络, 城市创业活力, 分位数回归模型, 网络外部性, 知识溢出, 中国

Abstract:

The development of financial network has profoundly changed cities' ability to obtain resources and further affected the entrepreneurial vitality of cities. The externalities of financial network and their transmission mechanisms have become a research hotspot in financial geography. This study constructed city financial networks based on the data of the headquarters and branches of 839 financial enterprises in China, established 274 × 274 matrices for 2010, 2015, and 2020, and measured the entrepreneurial vitality of cities by the number of new enterprises. The impact of financial network embedding on entrepreneurial vitality of cities was then quantitatively tested by a combination of multiple linear regression model, intermediary effect model, and quantile regression model. A conceptual framework was tentatively proposed to understand the impact of financial network embedding on entrepreneurial vitality of cities from the perspective of network externality and entrepreneurship theory. Three conclusions are drawn: 1) Financial network embedding has a positive impact on the promotion of the entrepreneurial vitality of cities. Those cities with higher network link scale, link accessibility, and network power are in a dominant position in the network competition, and thus have a higher level of entrepreneurial development. 2) The financial network acts as a conduit to communicate with different node cities, and node cities can significantly improve their entrepreneurial vitality by enhancing the availability of financial capital and knowledge production level through network links. 3) The impact of financial network embedding on entrepreneurial vitality of cities is characterized by multi-dimensional heterogeneity. On the one hand, from the perspective of urban marginal revenue, with the improvement of entrepreneurial development level, financial network embedding has a non-linear impact on entrepreneurship vitality of cities, which first rises and then declines. On the other hand, from the perspective of spatial heterogeneity, financial network embedding has a greater impact on entrepreneurial performance in central and western cities than in eastern cities. The results of this study have clear policy implications. In the future, the government should accelerate the construction of financial enterprise network and fully release the positive impact of financial network externalities on entrepreneurial vitality of cities. At the same time, high attention should be paid to the heterogeneity of urban network externalities to promote the effective improvement of entrepreneurial vitality of different types of cities.

Key words: financial network, entrepreneurial vitality of the city, quantile regression model, network externality, knowledge spillover, China