Special economic zones and inter-prefecture collaborative innovation: evidence from China

Xiaoshu Xu, Bohan Li and Xuechen Meng

Regional Studies, 2025, vol. 59, issue 1, 2434658

Abstract: This paper studies whether and how the establishment of new special economic zones (SEZs) following a regulatory policy on SEZ construction can affect inter-prefecture collaborative innovation in China. This policy required SEZs to develop leading industries reflecting the local region’s comparative advantage, and to improve the business environment. We find new SEZs established after this policy increased inter-prefecture joint applications for invention-patents of a treated prefecture by 25–28%. The positive effect was more salient for eastern provinces and the two largest urban agglomerations. Agglomeration of leading industries and the strengthened intellectual property right protection effectively increased collaborative innovation.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00343404.2024.2434658 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:regstd:v:59:y:2025:i:1:p:2434658

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CRES20

DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2024.2434658

Access Statistics for this article

Regional Studies is currently edited by Ivan Turok

More articles in Regional Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().