Abstract: How to improve the vitality of entrepreneurial activities at the county level is a practical issue that needs to be addressed to achieve urban-rural integration and common prosperity. Based on the panel data of 1,836 counties (county-level cities) in China from 2004 to 2022, this paper systematically analyzes the impact of the establishment of new rural financial institutions on county-level entrepreneurial vitality using a multi-period difference-in-differences model. The results show that: first, the establishment of new rural financial institutions can effectively enhance county-level entrepreneurial vitality, and this conclusion remains valid after a series of endogeneity treatments and robustness tests, such as instrumental variable regression, PSM-DID, and heterogeneous robust estimators. Second, the establishment of new rural financial institutions indirectly boosts county-level entrepreneurial vitality by improving the degree of banking competition, enhancing the availability of credit resources, raising the level of human capital, and expanding the scale of the consumer market. Third, the entrepreneurial incentive effect of the establishment of new rural financial institutions is more pronounced in areas with a strong red cultural atmosphere, low clan cultural level, and low degree of administrative and cultural segmentation. Fourth, new rural financial institutions do not exhibit significant cross-county spillover effects on entrepreneurship, but realize the geographical agglomeration effect of entrepreneurial activities within counties. This study helps to understand the specific impact of the establishment of new rural financial institutions on county-level entrepreneurship from the perspectives of aggregate volume and space, and provides certain implications for the realization of comprehensive rural revitalization and urban-rural integrated development.

Key words: new rural financial institutions, county-level entrepreneurial activity, intermediate mechanism, geographical agglomeration effect