Urban innovation structures and economic productivity of Chinese cities

Yingcheng Li, Zhenghua Ren and Manya Tu

Regional Studies, 2025, vol. 59, issue 1, 2579626

Abstract: This study investigates how the spatial structure of urban innovation affects economic productivity, using over 9.5 million geocoded patents across 233 Chinese cities from 2009 to 2020. We identify innovation centres through 1 km-grid analysis and construct structure indices of polycentricity and dispersion. Results show that a moderately polycentric yet concentrated innovation structure enhances economic productivity. Instrumental variable estimation using historical Confucian temples confirms causality. Mechanism analyses reveal that such spatial configurations support agglomeration economies and strengthen external knowledge linkages. These findings underscore the importance of strategically allocating innovation resources across multiple centres in enhancing economic productivity.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00343404.2025.2579626 (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:2579626

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

DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2025.2579626

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 ().