Research On Urban Innovation Efficiency And Its Spillover Effect In The Yangtze River Delta

In recent years,China has become the second largest R&D executing country in the world with increasing investment in innovation.While the innovation input keeps increasing,the contribution rate of scientific and technological progress does not show an obvious trend of growth.The investment of innovation resource is highly unbalanced among regions,and its internal structure is decentralized,reduplicative and independent.In the two dimensions of space and value chain,the allocation of innovation resources needs to be optimized.In the context of China's economic development entering the "New Normal",the innovation capacity of the Yangtze River Delta(YRD)has not only become increasingly important as a core driving force of economic growth,but also has become an important reference for measuring the quality of regional economic development.On the other hand,the problems of uneven regional internal development,inadequate collaborative innovation and cooperation mechanisms,and the need for deeper integration still exist.To achieve the strategic goal of high-quality integrated development of the YRD in new period,it is necessary to further optimize the allocation of innovation resources in Jiangsu,Zhejiang,Anhui and Shanghai,comprehensively improve the level of overall regional innovation efficiency,and magnify the spillover effect of innovation efficiency to expand the depth and breadth of collaborative innovation.In order to understanding the reality of innovation development in the YRD more scientifically and accurately,and inquiry the structural and spatial differences in innovation efficiency of each city,and then analyze its spillover effects,this study divides the process of urban innovation activities into two main links based on the innovation value chain theory : R&D innovation and production innovation.Collecting the panel data of each city from 2003 to 2017,and using the Super-Efficiency DEA model calculate the efficiency of two links,and then analyze the spatial differentiation and evolution trend of efficiency.Spatial econometric models are set up to perform regression tests on the value chain spillover effects and spatial spillover effects of innovation efficiency.Two types of spatial weight matrices of geographic characteristics and economic characteristics are used for the comparative analysis of the spillover effects and action mechanism.The study reached the following main conclusions: 1)During the research period,the overall level of R&D innovation efficiency of cities in the YRD lags behind production innovation,and tends to a “weak R&D,strong transformation” model.Many cities perform poorly in both R&D innovation and production innovation.The level of R&D innovation efficiency and production innovation efficiency in each city is on the rise,the regional distribution has shown a “gathering-spillover-equilibrium” development trend,and the internal gap has been narrowing.Compared with R&D innovation,the spatial spillover effect of production innovation is slower.2)There is a significant positive spatial spillover effect in the R&D innovation efficiency of cities in the YRD,but it is highly related to the level of urban economic development.The efficiency of production innovation is the opposite.High-level cities rely more on geographical proximity to carry out spatial spillovers in this link.The spatial spillover effect of production innovation efficiency on R&D innovation efficiency is positive but not significant.The improvement of one city's production innovation efficiency cannot significantly improve the R&D innovation efficiency of nearby cities and cities with similar economic development levels.The efficiency of R&D innovation has a negative impact on the production innovation efficiency of nearby cities and cities with similar economic development levels,and this negative impact is stronger to similar economic development level cities.3)The value chain spillover effect of urban innovation efficiency in the YRD is significant.Backward spillover is weaker than forward spillover,and a certain degree of efficiency “disconnection” occurs between the R&D and production links.Aiming at the current status of urban innovation efficiency in the YRD and the problems existing in the process of spillover effects,this study proposes the following countermeasures: Optimize the R&D resource sharing platform to comprehensively improve the level of urban innovation efficiency;Improve the innovation service system and promote the efficient transformation of scientific and technological achievements;Improve the level of innovation resource allocation,build a close-knit regional collaborative innovation system;Weaken regional barriers and work collectively to achieve high-quality integration.