The Role Of Universities In Urban Economic Development

With the rapid development of knowledge economy,the role of universities in economic and social development is becoming more and more important.At a time when the demand for universities from the outside world is increasing,the university itself is seeking a transformation,which is from the closed ‘ivory tower' to an active participant in economic and social activities.In this process,the way of university's knowledge production is changing from focusing on basic research to frequently participating in industrial technology development.Open and inclusive cooperative innovation model gradually replaces linear innovation model.As a result,the organizational structure of the university has changed,creating a large number of ‘hybrid organizations'.these so-called cross-border institutions have further promoted the linkages between universities and industry.In the context of the knowledge-based era,universities evolve from higher education institutions to multi-functional economic organizations and become an important parts of the knowledge infrastructure of regional economic development.Because of the diversified functions of universities,universities can have multifaceted impacts on regional economic development.This study attempts to examines the impact of universities on regional economic development from the perspective of university-industry linkages(UILs).Based on the research topic,this paper systematically reviews the triple helix theory,the Model 2 theory,the knowledge flows and the regional innovation theory,then forms the theoretical basis of this research: university,knowledge and regional development.Based on the theories,this study constructs the conceptual framework of the impacts of university to regional economic development from the perspective of the UILs.In order to carry on the following empirical research,this paper uses the network crawler technology to obtain the cooperation and transfer data of the Chinese invention authorization patent in 2004-2015,and then filter this data to obtain the patent data which can represents the UILs,finally based on specific rules to obtain the the UILs data from the above data.This study attempts to examine the spatial characteristics of university-industry linkages and their network and local effects on a macro scale,as well as the clustering effects on a micro scale.The main research contents,methods and conclusions are as follows:(1)Through spatial analysis methods and social network analysis methods,the overall development trend and spatial distribution pattern of Chinese UILs were depicted.The results showed that the UILs were becoming much closer,and the form of cross-city connection was the main.At the same time,the spatial pattern of UILs was relatively stable,the high administrative grade and economically developed cities were the frequent place of UILs,because these cities had the advantages of UILs,that was,they had the first-class research universities and innovative enterprises.And then spatio-temporal evolution and organizational structure of the network in intercity UILs were investigated.The results showed that the network of the intercity UILs continued to develop,the complexity of the topological structure continued to improve,the organization structure had experienced the development process of "firstly discrete,then concentrate",and the intercity UILs was bound by the administrative division to some extent.Meanwhile,Beijing's core position in the network was becoming more and more prominent.Industry-university Alliance,State-owned enterprises and the enterprise-university-research institutes were the important institutional factors to promote the network development of intercity UILs.(2)According to the intercity UILs network,the spatial beta convergence model and spatial durbin model were used to analyze the economic convergence effect and economic spillover effect of intercity UILs network,to construct the urban "industryuniversity proximity" matrix.The results showed that the intercity UILs network promoted the convergence of urban economy and could effectively alleviate the regional economic differences,but the economic convergence effect had a trend of decreasing,which might be due to that the increase of UILs between economically developed cities led to the "club effect" of the network itself;and the economic spillover effect emerged in intercity UILs network.However,there was no spillover effect in the elements of economic input,indicating that talents and other senior elements of production had local "stickiness".In addition,the intercity UILs network constructed a "streaming space",and the difference in the status of urban nodes led to the different ability in converging the knowledge and information.And through the negative binomial regression model,under the influence of controlling administrative grade and opening-up grade,it verified the node grade effect of intercity UILs network,that is,the city's network status and the development of innovative entrepreneurship were positively correlated.(3)Through the panel regression model,the influence of the UILs intensity on the urban economic development was investigated.The results showed that the UILs events had a positive effect on the development of urban economy,but the amount of UILs had no obvious effect on it,which showed that the internal motive force of UILs effecting on urban economic development was knowledge overflow,but not the income acquisition.In order to further explore the influence mechanism of UILs intensity on urban economic development,the concept of urban absorptive capacity was introduced.Based on the knowledge subject(university and enterprise)of UILs,the comprehensive index of urban absorptive capacity was constructed through the foundation of higher education,the foundation of scientific research,the foundation of industrial research and development and the foundation of entrepreneurial environment.Through regulatory effect model and the intermediary effect model,the mechanism of action was tested.The results showed that the regulatory effect of urban absorptive capacity did not exist,which might be caused due to insufficient absorptive capacity or due to the knowledge produced by UILs as commercial cooperation was exclusive.However,the urban absorptive capacity showed the intermediary effect,which indicated that the UILs promoted the absorption of the city's knowledge from other sources by enhancing the absorptive capacity of the city,and then promoted the urban economic development.The results of group test showed that the intermediary effect of urban absorptive capacity was more obvious in the innovation-driving period than that in the investmentdriving period,and it was more obvious in the eastern region than that in the central and western regions.(4)Take Shanghai as an example,in the context of college enrollment expansion and rapid urbanization,the spatial distribution of universities within cities expresses the migration from the core urban areas to the suburbs.The relationship between university and sub-city space is more diversified,and the permeability of campus to the sub-city is an important factor affecting the interactive development of the two,so it will also affect the generation of university-based innovation space.Through the spatial tobit model,the co-location of the university and the innovative enterprise is verified.And at the same time,compared with the common universities,the co-location of the research university(and the entrepreneurial university)and the innovative enterprise is more obvious.In addition,compared with the new campus,the co-location of the old campus and the innovative enterprise is more obvious.Based on this,this study divides two types of university-based innovation space of the "top-down" and "down-top",in which,universities play an important role in regional governance.This paper takes Wujiaochang area and Zizhu Science Park as typical cases,and it is found that the UILs between university and surrounding enterprises has the closest contact,which indicates that the university-based innovation space truely serves as the innovation poles of urban economic development.This paper constructs a conceptual framework on the influence of universities on urban economic development,and establishes a database of UILs,which provides empirical evidence from China for the relative research.In the future,it should pay attention to the role of universities of training science and technology personnel in the economic development,the UILs on the global scale and its influence as well as the role of universities in regional governance.