The Impacts of Production Linkages On Cross-Regional Collaborative Innovations: The Role of Inter-Regional Network Capital

Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how different types of cross-regional production linkages promote cross-regional collaborative innovations. Based on the econometric analysis of a Chinese patent database, we found that inter-regional production linkages indeed can facilitate inter-regional collaborative research and development (RD 2) inter-regional network capital positively mediates the relationship between the linkages of capital goods and the inter-regional collaborative innovations; and 3) the linkage among capital goods, network capital, and collaborative innovation is stronger when the regional pairs have higher Similarity of the economic development level.