Abstract: Industry-finance collaboration is a pivotal driver for deepening the financial supply-side structural reform and advancing innovation-driven development. Using the 2016 “Industry-Finance Cooperation Pilot Cities” policy (jointly promulgated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other authorities) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study empirically tests its impact on inter-city collaborative innovation based on the 2008-2023 panel data of 285 prefecture-level and above cities in China. The findings indicate that industrial-financial cooperation policies can significantly enhance inter-city collaborative innovation. The mechanism analysis reveals that pilot policies for the industrial-financial cooperation can promote inter-city collaborative innovation through the “resource supply effect” of alleviating financing constraints and optimizing resource allocation efficiency, as well as the “information friction effect” of reducing transaction costs and strengthening coordination among innovation entities. The heterogeneity analysis confirms that the policy's promotional effect is more pronounced in regions with abundant human capital, high marketization, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yangtze River Delta, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Therefore, standardized innovative financial services and regulated innovative financial supply should be established; the sharing of industrial-financial cooperation information platforms should be promoted to reduce transaction costs in industrial-financial coordination; policy-guided funds should be empowered to facilitate the transformation of industrial innovation achievements; and an institutionalized collaborative innovation mechanism should be established to ensure the long-term stable operation of the “industry-financial-innovation” system.

Key words: industry-finance cooperation, cooperation and innovation between cities, world-class urban agglomeration, unified large market, financial power