Relatedness, Complexity, and Economic Growth in Chinese Cities

Yingcheng Li and David Rigby

International Regional Science Review, 2023, vol. 46, issue 1, 3-37

Abstract: Innovation is generally regarded as critical to long-run economic growth. Recent work, at different spatial scales, suggests economies that develop more complex technologies that are related to their existing knowledge stocks enjoy a growth premium. Thus, “smarter†forms of innovation may accelerate growth. These claims are examined using Chinese patent data distributed across 286 cities over the period 1991–2015. Fixed-effects panel models report that city-level GDP growth in China has a significant and positive relationship with diversification into more related and complex technologies, after controlling for the overall pace of innovation and other covariates. Robustness checks focusing on spatial autocorrelation and endogeneity affirm the core findings.

Keywords: Chinese cities; GDP growth; geography of innovation; smarter specialization; relatedness and complexity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:inrsre:v:46:y:2023:i:1:p:3-37

DOI: 10.1177/01600176221082308

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