Abstract: The national innovative city pilot policy is an important measure to promote urban innovation. Since 2008, China has approved 78 national innovative city pilots successively. Has this policy affected the labor income share of Chinese enterprises? This paper takes the pilot policies of the national innovative cities for a quasi-natural experiment to conduct an empirical study with the data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2017 and the times difference model, the findings show that, in general, the pilot policy has significantly improved the labor income share of local enterprises in the pilot cities.And this effect has significant heterogeneity due to enterprise ownership, the size, whether it belongs to high-tech enterprises, whether it has export business and so on. The labor income share of the enterprises that are non-state-owned, medium and small scaled, hi-tech, or manufacturing exporting are significantly affected. The test results of the influencing mechanism show that technological progress is an important path influencing the labor income share by the pilot policies. On the one hand, the pilot policy promotes the labor income share by accelerating the independent innovation of enterprises; on the other hand, it restricts the labor income share by increasing enterprises’ production efficiency. The above-mentioned conclusion implies that the government should further optimize the pilot policies for the innovative city pilots, promote the construction of the pilot cities, and give full play to their promoting effect on the labor income share.

Key words: innovative city pilots, technological progress, labor income share, independent innovation, income share