高端人才空间集聚与后发国家创新发展——来自中国个体专利数据的证据

Abstract

Innovation is the primary engine of development, with talent being the most critical resource for innovation activities. For latecomer countries with insufficient innovation talent endowments, clustering top innovation talent in key industries is a crucial strategy to achieve innovation catch-up. This paper extends traditional economic theories of agglomeration by considering different stages of national innovation development. Using individual patent data from nine strategic emerging industries in China from 2001 to 2019, it analyzes the impacts and mechanisms of top talent clustering on individual innovation output from a micro perspective. The findings demonstrate that the clustering of top innovation talent in cities significantly enhances both the quantity and quality of individual innovation. This paper identifies four crucial mechanisms: local knowledge networks, collaborative knowledge spillovers, international knowledge networks, and market-based clustering. A counterfactual analysis shows that a uniform distribution of top talent would reduce the nation's total innovation output, while concentrating talent in key industrial cities significantly boosts national innovation output.