While existing studies have examined the separate effects of local governments’ internal conditions and external environment on local innovation, few have paid attention to their interactive effects. This study examines whether state-level rules regarding local discretion moderate the effects of city governments’ slack resources and learning, using local sustainability innovation as an example. We distinguish two types of discretion (fiscal and statutory) granted by state governments. Applying a difference-in-differences (DDD) approach with a longitudinal dataset of 238 U.S. cities, we find that fiscal discretion strengthens the positive effect of fiscal slack while statutory discretion enhances the positive effect of learning. The findings uncover the complex interactions between multilevel institutional arrangements and local innovation mechanisms.

虽然已有研究考察了地方政府内部条件和外部环境对地方创新的单独影响，但很少有人关注它们的交互作用。本研究以地方可持续发展创新为例，检验了有关地方自由裁量权的州级规则是否能缓和城市政府资源和学习的松弛效应。我们区分州政府授予的两种类型的自由裁量权（财政和法定）。对 238 个美国城市的纵向数据集应用差异中的差异 (DDD) 方法，我们发现财政自由裁量权增强了财政松弛的积极影响，而法定自由裁量权增强了学习的积极影响。