Can higher marketization improve the level of entrepreneurship? - Evidence from China's negative list for market access

Increasing the level of entrepreneurship is the key to achieving high-quality economic development. This paper examines the impact of market access deregulation on entrepreneurial activity and the mechanism behind it by constructing an event study methodological model using city-level data in China. It is found that the implementation of the negative market access list system significantly increases the level of entrepreneurial activity and has obvious regional heterogeneity, which is more obvious in cities with high levels of market size, industry barriers and factor allocation. The above results still hold after a series of robustness tests such as heterogeneity treatment effects, excluding other policy disturbances, excluding policy non-randomness, and instrumental variables approach. The mechanism analysis shows that the negative market access list system mainly increases entrepreneurial activity by optimising the business environment, improving market confidence and increasing policy aggregation. Further research shows that the negative list system of market access can lead to the improvement of employment quality level through the improvement of entrepreneurial activity. The research in this paper provides a theoretical basis for accelerating the construction of a national unified market.