This study makes an innovative contribution to the existing literature and fills a critical research gap by being the first to construct a unified analytical framework that integrates financial marketization, dual innovation and New Quality Productive Forces (NQPF). Based on the incremental perspective of the social financing structure, this article takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2013 to 2022 as samples to analyse the impact and mechanism of the marketization of the financial structure on the NQPF of micro enterprises. The results show that the marketization of financial structure has a significant positive effect on NQPF, a one percentage point increase in the degree of financial structure marketization corresponds to a 1.1538% point increase in the aggregate level of NQPF. After a series of robustness tests, the conclusion is still valid. Dual innovation is an effective mechanism. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive incentive effect of financial structure marketization on the NQPF is greater for nonstate-owned enterprises, high-tech enterprises, companies with a lower shareholding ratio of institutional investors and those with lower levels of environmental uncertainty. This study offers actionable insights and policy implications for advancing the marketization of financial structure and promoting the development of NQPF.
Cao et al. (Tue,) studied this question.