Abstract: Entrepreneurship can be used to stimulate the economic vitality of the north and solve the north-south development problem. However, in the absence of the whole industry and SME data, there is no in-depth analysis in previous literature of all entrepreneurial groups’ behaviors, leading to the lack of a scientific solution to the regional development imbalance issue. Using the high-frequency full enterprise big data, industrial agglomeration indicators of 277 cities in China are constructed. The impact of agglomeration on total enterprise entrepreneurship is studied, and the regulating effect of institutions on entrepreneurship is analyzed. It is found that agglomeration can promote the city's entrepreneurship. The marginal effect of agglomeration in the south is greater than that in the north. This is related to the mechanism of agglomeration. Institutional environment has a moderating effect on agglomeration. Based on the trend of production factors flowing to the south, the northern government needs to use preferential policies and to create a loose institutional environment making entrepreneurs back to the cluster, so as to realize the industrial structure upgrading in the specialization. It is an important attempt for this paper to realize the modernization of governance and make scientific arrangements for regional development with the massive data. Our finding is also instructive to promote the mass entrepreneurship and innovation, and to increase the multi-channel employment.

Key words: big data; industrial agglomeration; entrepreneurial behavior; the north-south economic divide