Gao, Xing; (2022) China’s regional innovation and intellectual property rights protection from a regional development perspective. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Abstract

Against the background of rapid improvement in national economic growth and innovation capabilities, China is facing with development gaps and regional disparities. Meanwhile, intellectual property rights (IPRs) protection is found to be an important determinant of innovation and growth. However, there is currently limited quantitative evidence available to provide a more detailed understanding of inequality in innovation and IPRs protection at sub-national level. Against this backdrop, this thesis aims to investigate the landscape of China’s regional innovation and IPRs protection from a regional development perspective. More specifically, the following questions are asked and answered: (1) from innovation perspective, what are the spatiotemporal patterns of innovation within different spatial scales and what are the spatial mechanisms of innovation across regions? (2) from the perspective of interaction between regional development, IPRs protection and innovation across regions, how do regional economy and IPRs protection affect innovation at different spatial scales? (3) based on above analysis, a converse relationship is examined: whether can regional development and innovation impact IPRs institution at sub-national level? This research contributes to the existing knowledge by considering innovation as a dynamic phenomenon across regions and across multiple spatial scales. Such dynamic view is accomplished through incorporating IPRs protection into the analytical framework. This thesis employs quantitative methods to answer above questions. Specifically, an analytical framework which integrates a global indicator of mobility association with local indicators of mobility association is employed to deal with spatiotemporal patterns of innovation, and Geographical Weighted Regression is used to explore the spatial mechanisms of innovation. Second, employing a Bayesian analysis of multi-level spatial correlation, this research examines the roles of regional economies and IPRs protection in innovation. Lastly, multi-level modeling, spatial Durbin model and instrument variable are used to address how regional development and innovation impact IPRs institution from the perspectives of economic transition, urbanisation and spatial heterogeneity. The three main findings of this research are as follows: First, the estimate of innovation mobility is sensitive to spatial scale. The main driving force behind innovation is interregional mobility, leading to the increasing inequalities in innovation mobility at provincial level within China. In addition, the relationships between regional innovation mobility and its determinants are spatially nonstationary and heterogenic. Second, due to the negative effects of supplier linkages at provincial level, the role of regional economies at prefecture level is more evident. Furthermore, the effects of IPRs protection at both prefecture and provincial levels are significant in all models, and its effects are increasing with the improvement of model performance. Third, marketisation and decentralisation positively influence IPRs protection, whereas globalisation has a negative effect on IPRs protection. Additionally, the spatial spillover effects of sustainable urbanisation on IPRs protection are significant, and the distance to central city is important to the spillover effect. The role of Xuzhou that is the central city is not significant. The positive effect of density can prove the existence of agglomeration economy. Meanwhile, the results on division demonstrate the negative impact of FDI.

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