Digital infrastructure and urban economic resilience: evidence from the “Broadband China” pilot policy

This paper investigates the impact of digital infrastructure development on urban economic resilience with a quasi-natural experimental approach. Based on prefecture level dataset pertaining to 281 cities from 2011 to 2019, we find that the implementation of 'Broadband China' pilot policy has had a positive and significant impact on economic resilience and such an effect is more pronounced in coastal regions than other regions. Further, we show that the transition of labour skill is the underlying mechanism to explain the favourable effect of digital infrastructure on economic resilience.