Innovation-Oriented Urban Policies and Energy Efficiency: Mechanisms, Spatial Spillovers, and Policy Insights

Enhancing urban energy efficiency is central to low-carbon transition and broader urban sustainability. However, whether innovation-oriented urban policy can generate such gains, through which channels it operates, and whether its effects extend beyond pilot cities remain insufficiently understood. Focusing on China’s Innovative City Pilot (ICP) program, this study uses panel data for 274 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2022 and treats the staggered implementation of the program as a quasi-natural e