On Regional Innovation Efficiency: Evidence from Panel Data of China's Different Provinces

BAI J. On regional innovation efficiency: evidence from panel data of China's different provinces, Regional Studies. The main goals of this paper were to estimate the regional innovation efficiency in China and to investigate major factors affecting efficiency scores. Stochastic frontier methods with a translog production function were applied. The samples were composed of the panel data of China's thirty provinces for the period between 1998 and 2007. The empirical results show that innovation efficiency in China remained at a lower level and had much room for improvement. The impact of major factors and their interplay with innovation efficiency was negative. This indicated that internal construction of the regional innovation system was far from perfect. The innovation efficiency in the eastern regions was higher than that in the central and western regions.