Common prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism and the top priority of socialist modernization. Common prosperity in the new era not only emphasizes the prosperity of material life, but also pays attention to the fullness of spiritual life, which is the unity of development and sharing. To promote common prosperity in high-quality development, we need to rely on the strong driving force of innovation. Therefore, we must promote high-quality development through innovation, so as to achieve common prosperity.

Based on the theoretical analysis of the impact of innovative city pilot policy on the development of common prosperity, this paper uses the panel data of 258 cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2002 to 2020 to construct a common prosperity index from the two dimensions of commonness and affluence, and uses the multi-period DID model for empirical testing. The results show that the implementation of innovative city pilot policy is conducive to the development of common prosperity, and this conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. The heterogeneity test finds that the innovative city pilot policy can significantly promote the development of common prosperity in central and western regions and general cities. The mechanism test shows that the innovative city pilot policy mainly acts on common prosperity through urbanization, talent agglomeration, and industrial structure upgrading.

The contributions of this paper are as follows: First, from the perspective of innovative city pilot policy, it uses the multi-period DID model to conduct an empirical study on whether the innovative city pilot policy can promote common prosperity, which not only expands the policy effect analysis of innovative city pilot policy, but also provides policy enlightenment for promoting the development of common prosperity in the new era. It also provides a decision-making basis for further expanding the scope of innovative city pilot projects in the next stage. Second, it constructs an indicator system of common prosperity from the two dimensions of commonness and affluence, and measures the common prosperity index, which further supplements the quantitative measurement of common prosperity. Third, it clarifies and empirically tests the mechanism of innovative city pilot policy on common prosperity from the three aspects of urbanization, talent agglomeration, and industrial structure upgrading, which provides a theoretical basis for further formulating policies to promote common prosperity.