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Exploring the effect of political borders on university-industry collaborative research performance: Evidence from China’s Guangdong province

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  • Chen, Guanghua
  • Yang, Guoliang
  • He, Feng
  • Chen, Kaihua

Abstract

This paper investigates how political borders affect university-industry (U-I) collaborative research performance. It is hypothesised that cross- and within-regional political borders have an inhibitory effect on cross-border U-I collaborative research performance. The empirical research considers political borders and geographic distance to disentangle the border effect from the spatial distance effect based on a novel dataset comprising 681 U-I collaborative research projects in China’s Guangdong province. The results confirm the hypothesis that within-regional political border has a negative impact on U-I collaborative research performance, while an inhibitory effect of cross-regional political border was not observed. The results are robust for alternative dependent variables and different regression methods. Theoretical contributions and practical implications for cross-border U-I collaborative research management and policies are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Guanghua & Yang, Guoliang & He, Feng & Chen, Kaihua, 2019. "Exploring the effect of political borders on university-industry collaborative research performance: Evidence from China’s Guangdong province," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 82, pages 58-69.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:techno:v:82-83:y:2019:i::p:58-69
    DOI: 10.1016/j.technovation.2019.02.001
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