IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/regstd/v59y2025i1p2572710.html

How the nature of technologies influences their cross-city inflows: empirical evidence from China, 2001–2020

Author

Listed:
  • Kang Sun
  • Yingcheng Li

Abstract

Drawing on over 10 million patent applications, this study examines factors influencing technology inflows from the perspective of technological nature. We find an inverted-U relationship between technology inflows and relative complexity, suggesting cities favour technologies that match their own complexity levels. Additionally, both a technology’s structural hole and its relatedness to the city’s technological base positively affect inflows. Instrumental variable analysis confirms the causal impact of structural holes, and robustness checks validate these findings. Heterogeneity analyses reveal a compensatory effect between relatedness density and structural holes, and a threshold effect of relative complexity on the role of relatedness density.

Suggested Citation

  • Kang Sun & Yingcheng Li, 2025. "How the nature of technologies influences their cross-city inflows: empirical evidence from China, 2001–2020," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(1), pages 2572710-257, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:regstd:v:59:y:2025:i:1:p:2572710
    DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2025.2572710
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00343404.2025.2572710
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00343404.2025.2572710?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:regstd:v:59:y:2025:i:1:p:2572710. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CRES20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.