Abstract:In order to promo1te high-quality development and realize green transformation of the economy, the Chinese government has been expanding the scope of low-carbon pilot cities and innovative pilot cities in recent years. This paper takes the dual pilot low-carbon cities and innovative cities as the research object, and uses a multi-period DID model to empirically examine the effect of dual pilot city construction on green total factor productivity and its mechanism of action based on panel data of 282 cities in China from 2007 to 2019. The empirical results show that compared with non-dual pilot cities, the dual pilot policy can significantly promote the growth of green total factor productivity in cities, and, compared with the single pilot policy, the construction of low-carbon cities and innovative dual pilot cities has a more significant effect on the green development of regional economies. Further study finds that the dual pilot cities can promote green total factor productivity growth through two ways: improving the level of green technology innovation and optimizing industrial structure. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the dual pilot city construction has a more obvious role in promoting green total factor productivity in eastern cities and non-resource-based cities.