Abstract: Based on the city panel data of China, this paper empirically studies the impact of entrepreneurial vitality on the growth of urban service industry by using the system GMM panel estimation method. In the empirical study, it not only uses the national urban samples to carry out the benchmark regression analysis, but also performs group estimation from three aspects, i.e., regions, scales of cities and levels of market opening. The findings show that the entrepreneurial vitality has significantly promoted the economic growth of urban service industry; the entrepreneurial vitality of the eastern and central regions has significantly promoted the economic growth of urban service industry, while the promotion effects in the western and northeastern regions are not significant; the effect of entrepreneurial vitality on service growth in large cities and middle cities is higher than that in small cities, while it is not significant in megacities; the promotion effect of entrepreneurial vitality on economic growth of service industry in open cities of Type I and open cities of Type III is greater than that of cities with no special economic zone.

Key words: entrepreneurial vitality; urban service industry; regional heterogeneity; city size; market openness