| Throughout the history of global economic and technological development,the scientific and technological revolution has become the main driving force for global social and economic development.In the context of economic globalization and a new round of scientific and technological revolution,national competitiveness is more dependent on technological innovation than ever before,and increasing the intensity of R&D investment as the most effective and direct means of promoting technological progress is being recognized by more and more countries.In recent years,compared with the rapid growth of China's economy,the growth rate of R&D investment in China has accelerated.However,these scientific and technological resources have not fully transformed into the academic or economic value we expect,and the R&D efficiency is relatively low.As China's economy enters a new normal,the long-term high R&D expenditure on R&D investment is unsustainable,which means that the increase in the contribution of China's R&D investment to the social economy should rely more on the efficiency of R&D rather than blindly expanding R&D expenditures.At present,most western developed countries have considered the improvement of R&D efficiency and transformation capacity as the main way to enhance their independent innovation capabilities.Under this background,the evaluation of the quality and efficiency of China's R&D activities will help to objectively understand the level of China's scientific research and realize the effective allocation of scientific research resources.It is of great significance for the guidance of government policies and the implementation of regional innovation and development strategies..R&D activities are a complex system process.An important feature of R&D is knowledge spillover.Knowledge spillovers between innovation entities among the regions exist in R&D activities.R&D activities will be affected by knowledge spillovers under different spatial scales and in different conduction paths.It can be seen that the research on the factors affecting the R&D efficiency should take into account the knowledge spillover factors.The knowledge spillovers under the different spatial scale and the different conduction paths will increase the R&D efficiency.Previous research has regarded R&D activities as a “black box” without considering the complexity inside R&D activities.The calculation of R&D efficiency can not only truly reflect the overall efficiency of R&D activities,but also fail to explore the impact of various stages of R&D activities on value chain spillovers.To this end,based on the conceptual framework of the multi-stage chain R&D process,this paper decomposes the R&D process into two stages: knowledge creation and knowledge commercialization.The network DEA model was used to measure the R&D efficiency of various stages in China from 2009 to 2017,and the “black box” of the R&D process was opened.On this basis,starting from the knowledge spillover under multi-space scale and the knowledge spillover under different conduction paths,this paper attempts to establish an econometric model to empirically and systematically test and analyze the impact mechanism of knowledge spillover on the efficiency improvement of China's R&D activities,and draw the following conclusions:(1)The overall level of R&D efficiency in China is constantly improving,and the spatial distribution presents significantly spatial heterogeneity.Based on the conceptual framework of the two-stage chain R&D process,the knowledge creation efficiency,knowledge commercialization efficiency,and overall R&D efficiency are calculated.It is found that China's overall R&D efficiency is still low,but it shows a trend of increasing year by year.This shows that China's overall R&D efficiency has improved significantly in recent years,and its slowdown also reflects the decline in the scale of revenues that currently rely on increased R&D investment to improve R&D efficiency.The spatial differentiation analysis shows that the average R&D efficiency is the highest in the eastern region,and the increase of R&D efficiency in the central region is the largest,indicating that China's R&D efficiency is mainly contributed by the eastern region,and its annual increase is largely due to the improvement of R&D efficiency in the central region.The provinces and cities with low R&D efficiency are mainly distributed in the western region of China.The phased R&D efficiency of China's provinces shows certain differences in different regions.The knowledge creation efficiency of the coastal provinces is high,and the efficiency of knowledge commercialization is relatively low.The opposite is the western region.Finally,a coordinate system consisting of knowledge creation efficiency and knowledge commercialization efficiency is constructed as a recognition framework,and the weak links of its R&D process are identified to formulate the path of R&D efficiency improvement.For R&D efficiency path selection,the optimal path depends on regional capabilities and current efficiency levels.(2)The impact of knowledge spillovers in the R&D activity value chain only occurs within the region rather than between regions,while spatial knowledge spillover factors act on the overall R&D activity efficiency.Based on the analysis framework of knowledge spillover mechanism,the spatial Durbin model is used to quantify the impact of international knowledge spillover,spatial knowledge spillover and value chain knowledge spillover.It is found that spatial knowledge spillover between regions has a significant impact on the efficiency of overall R&D activities.It means that the overall R&D efficiency of a province or city is not only affected by the R&D efficiency of neighboring regions,but also affecting R&D efficiency in adjacent areas.The backward spillover or forward spillover of the R&D value chain only occurs within the region rather than between the regions.International knowledge spillovers have positively affected the improvement of knowledge creation efficiency to a certain extent,but this effect did not occur in the stage of knowledge commercialization.(3)This paper analyzes the influence mechanism of knowledge spillover on the efficiency of R&D activities under the dual conduction path of network effect and agglomeration effect from the theoretical and empirical perspectives respectively,and finds that the knowledge spillover effect of innovation agglomeration contributes more to the efficiency of knowledge commercialization.This also confirms the importance of tacit knowledge spillovers of innovation agglomeration on knowledge commercialization activities.However,the knowledge spillover effect of innovation networks in knowledge creation research is more important.Because knowledge creation activities rely more on coding knowledge that is easy to spread,even in areas where innovation is not concentrated,knowledge creation activities can be carried out efficiently.For knowledge commercialization activities that rely heavily on tacit knowledge spillovers,the importance of agglomeration effects is accepted and recognized in many literatures.In contrast,knowledge creation research relies more on coding knowledge gained through innovative networks.The demand for different types of knowledge in different stages of development may be an important factor in the difference between aggregation and network effects. |
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