Travel costs and inter-city collaborative innovation: Evidence of high-speed railway in China

Meiling Kang, Yucheng Li, Zhongkuang Zhao, Min Song and Jun Yi

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2023, vol. 65, issue C, 286-302

Abstract: This research takes use of China's HSR's staggered implementation to examine the influence of lower travel costs on inter-city collaborative inventions. By adopting a difference-in-differences approach and a special sample selection strategy, we verify that the HSR connection enhances the likelihood of new collaborations by 1.7 percent, and the number of collaborative inventions by 4.3 percent, but decreases their quality. Further investigation reveals that newly-formed collaborations are mostly responsible for the decline in quality, but the originality of existing collaborations grows dramatically. In terms of the mechanisms, we find that knowledge spillovers are the primary driver of collaboration. Besides, the HSR connection could enhance the effect of organizational and social proximity to facilitate collaborative innovation.

Keywords: Collaborative Innovation; Travel cost; Knowledge spillover; Complex technology; Proximity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O18 O31 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954349X23000073
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:streco:v:65:y:2023:i:c:p:286-302

DOI: 10.1016/j.strueco.2023.02.002

Access Statistics for this article

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics is currently edited by F. Duchin, H. Hagemann, M. Landesmann, R. Scazzieri, A. Steenge and B. Verspagen

More articles in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().