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The low-carbon city pilot policy is an important way to promote corporate green innovation, and it is also an inevitable choice to achieve the goals of achieving peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality. However, existing research on the impact of the low-carbon city pilot policy on green innovation lacks depth, and literature focusing on micro-corporate level is insufficient. Therefore, it is difficult to provide an effective reference for corporate green transformation. Based on the panel data of 936 A-share listed companies in China from 2007 to 2020, this paper took the low-carbon city pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment. The multistage dynamic difference-in-differences model and difference-in-difference-in-differences model were used to explore the impact of the low-carbon city pilot policy on corporate green innovation and its heterogeneity in terms of enterprise size, property rights, and carbon emission industry. Furthermore, from the perspective of environmental responsibility and talent agglomeration, this paper discussed the transmission mechanism of this policy to promote corporate green innovation and determined the optimal path for the low-carbon city pilot policy to take. The research results showed that: ① The low-carbon city pilot policy effectively promoted corporate green innovation in the pilot areas. Compared with the green utility model patent innovation, the pilot policy had a more significant impact on green invention patent innovation. A series of robustness tests such as PSM-DID and the placebo test found that the conclusion was still valid. ② The impact of the low-carbon city pilot policy on green innovation presented heterogeneity in terms of enterprise size, property rights, and carbon emission industry. This policy had a more significant policy impact on large-scale enterprises, and only had a positive impact on the utility model patent of state-owned enterprises but had a significant positive impact on the green innovation of non-state-owned enterprises to varying degrees. The low-carbon city pilot policy had a significant positive impact on the green innovation of enterprises in high-carbon industries but had a certain inhibitory effect on the green innovation of enterprises in low-carbon industries. ③ The main transmission mechanism of the low-carbon city pilot policy on the promotion of corporate green innovation was that the pilot policy enhanced the awareness of the environmental responsibility of enterprises by strengthening their management of environmental information disclosure, improving the level of their environmental protection investment, providing government support for their environmental protection, and inducing the effect of talent agglomeration by attracting talented people seeking employment and those who graduated from local universities as well as high-tech talents from enterprises. From the perspective of the transmission path effect, environmental responsibility played a greater role, followed by talent agglomeration. Therefore, the government should keep on expanding the scope of the lowcarbon pilot policy, give more financial and policy support to small and medium-sized technological private enterprises and green environmental protection enterprises, promote the shareholding system reform, mergers, and reorganization of state-owned enterprises, and provide sustainable environmental regulation and assistance to high-carbon emission enterprises. They should also continuously enhance enterprises' environmental responsibility awareness and promote the effect of talent agglomeration to improve the level of green innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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