The relationship between financial development and economic growth is one of the important topics discussed in economic studies. As a direct financing channel for the real economy, financial resources in the capital market are an important driving force for economic development. Economic development needs the continuous emergence and high-quality growth of new enterprises. Exploring the differences in regional entrepreneurship is an important perspective to explain regional economic vitality and the quality of economic development. Based on the registration data of national industrial and commercial enterprises from 2000 to 2017 and the IPO data of China’s A-share market, this paper studies the spillover effect of China’s capital market on the real economy from the perspective of the impact of IPO events on regional entrepreneurship. Specifically, it is found that IPO events can significantly improve the number and scale of entrepreneurship, and the positive effect of IPO events on entrepreneurship is still significant concerning the endogenous problem. In the moderating effect analysis, we document that IPO events show a positive impact on the corporate entrepreneurship but have an inhibitory effect on the non-corporate entrepreneurship. Furthermore, we find that IPO events have an “industry-pulling effect” and an “aggregation effect” in promoting entrepreneurship. Specifically, the evidence supports that IPO can drive entrepreneurship in the same industry and increase the proportion of new companies established within a radius of 2, 10, 20, and 30 kilometers around the registered address of the IPO company. Finally, this paper analyzes the impact of IPO events on the quality of enterprise development from the perspective of innovation, and the results show that IPO events can significantly increase enterprise innovation, which is beneficial to enterprise development quality. Overall, the results are consistent with the opinion that the capital market in China has a significantly positive spillover effect on the development speed and quality of the real economy.

The main contributions of this paper are as follows: First, based on the registration data of national industrial and commercial enterprises, this paper obtains the data on the number, scale and type of new enterprises established in the prefecture-level city, comprehensively, objectively and accurately measures entrepreneurship at the city level, reduces the estimation error, and enriches the relevant research in the field of urban entrepreneurial behavior. Second, this paper incorporates IPO into the research framework for analyzing entrepreneurship, which is beneficial to study the impact of the financial system on entrepreneurship, and enriches the relevant research on the factors affecting entrepreneurship. Third, by analyzing the impact of IPO on regional entrepreneurship, this paper also provides more micro evidence for a deep understanding of the economic spillover effect of IPO.