The national central city shoulders the important mission of leading regional economic develop-ment and promoting regional opening up.Their leading roles in innovation will provide a good platform for enterprise cooperation and innovation.Taking national central cities as the research object,central city con-struction is regarded as a quasi-natural experiment by using a difference-in-differences model to identify the impact of national central city construction on off-site collaborative innovation among enterprises.The results indicate that the construction of national central cities can significantly increase the number of joint patent applications between central cities and enterprises in other cities.The innovation-driven effect of national central cities is obvious.The heterogeneity analysis shows that the construction of national central cities had a stronger impact on the eastern region,private enterprises,and long-distance cooperative innovation within the same discipline.The mechanism test suggests that the national central cities influence the remote collab-orative innovation among enterprises by improving market integration,promoting regional industrial divi-sions,and enhancing economic ties.Further research demonstrates that the innovation-leading effect of na-tional central cities is of limited scope,but the quality of long-distance cooperative innovation among enter-prises is higher,and the sustainability and stability of innovation are better.Therefore,local governments should effectively utilize the opportunities of national central city construction to promote inter-city enterprise collaborative innovation,and promote the high-quality development of enterprises.
national central citymarket integrationcorporate innovationoff-site collaborative innova-tionunified national marketcity cluster