Technological Innovation: A Primary Driver to Promote Global Urban Common Prosperity——An Analysis of Factors Influencing the Competitiveness of 1,007 Cities around the World

Common prosperity, an important goal of human development, increasingly has to be achieved through the common prosperity of cities. The research into and discovery of the determinants which create differences in urban economic competitiveness is of great significance as, thereby, the research and expected discovery can help with the formulation of relevant policies for development, competition, and cooperation to promote win-win conditions among cities. However, such research is still rare. Based on the economic competitiveness data of 1,007 cities, this paper uses OLS regression and Shapley-value based decompositions regression to analyze factors affecting the economic competitiveness of global cities and differences that the cities made. Combined with quantile regression, studying the law of changing of each factor’s effect on cities with different levels of economic competitiveness is of theoretical and practical significance. The study findings are as follows.(1) The variability of global urban economic competitiveness is quite large. Cities in North America and Europe are still the benchmarks of global urban economic prosperity.(2) Financial services, technological innovation, industrial system, business environment, institutional environment, infrastructure, among other factors, have significant impacts on the economic competitiveness of cities.(3) The primary factor that influenced the variability in economic competitiveness is technological innovation.(4) The ranking of the main influencing factors varied slightly between cities at different levels of economic competitiveness. These indicate that the international community should promote innovation in and diffusion of science and technology to achieve common prosperity by narrowing the gap between cities. The relevant decision-making departments, e.g. urban planning departments with strong economic and finance expertise of the cities in different development zones should adopt different measures in accordance with their actual situations.