Government data openness and firms’ interregional collaborative innovation

Existing studies have mainly treated government data openness as an institutional arrangement for enhancing transparency and improving public governance, yet systematic micro-level evidence remains scarce on whether and how it affects the interregional collaborative innovation behavior of firms as micro-level innovation actors. This paper exploits the launch of local government data openness platforms in China as a quasi-natural experiment and uses panel data on Chinese A-share listed firms to identify the impact of government data openness on firms' interregional collaborative innovation through a staggered difference-in-differences approach. The results show that government data openness significantly promotes firms' interregional collaborative innovation, increasing the number of cross-city joint patent applications by 5.4% on average. Mechanism tests indicate that this effect operates mainly by alleviating spatiotemporal constraints and reducing institutional transaction costs. At the firm level, this paper reveals how government data openness shifts innovation collaboration from geographically proximate ties toward interregional linkages that place greater emphasis on knowledge complementarity, thereby enriching the micro-foundations of the formation of interregional collaborative innovation. At the same time, government data openness is not only a policy tool for enhancing transparency, but also a digital governance arrangement that reshapes innovation network structures, thereby extending the literature on institutional economics and digital governance.