The Impact Of Embodied And Disembodied International R&D Spillovers On Chinese Industrial Innovation Efficiency

In recent years, China must face the problem that old growth drivers were already faltering, leading to overcapacity in production, environmental pollution and increasing economic downward pressure. technical innovation is the key factor of development and transformation. On the one hand, it’s necessary for China to promote industrial technological innovation efficiency to complete the transition from a great traditional manufacturing nation to a powerful innovation-driven one with limited R&D resource inputs. Large and Medium-sized Industrial Enterprises(LMIE) are the subjects of the industrial technology innovation, therefore, we should establish scientific appraisal methods to examine their technical innovation efficiency. On the other hand, we can make use of embodied and disembodied international R&D spillovers effects from import trade, foreign direct investment(FDI) and technology contract import in a globalizing world. R&D spillovers can be divided into two types on the basis of their carrier.As the R&D activities have the obvious externality, it’s worthy and important for us to find out the impact of R&D spillovers in different forms on Chinese current industrial innovation.First, this paper gives a review of domestic and foreign related research literature and put forward the research significance and innovations, also analyzing the mechanism of R&D spillovers influence. Second, we use Chinese provincial data from 2001 to 2011 to calculate new product technical innovation efficiency(NPTE) and total product technical efficiency(TE) of LMIEs by DEA directional distance function method. Then we use panel data econometric method to make an empirical study on international spillovers effects on LMIE’s technical innovation efficiency.Finally, we concluded the following points based on the above study:(1) It has a downward trend about LMIE’s NPTEfrom east to west in China, while the intra-regional and inter-regional NPTE shows convergence trend.(2)The LMIE’s production efficiency is higher than the innovation efficiency, but gap between the two has been narrowed.(3) International R&D spillovers have more significant effect on promoting LMIE’s innovationefficiency than their own R&D capital stock.(4) Different types of spillovers have different effect on each region.Trade and FDI spillovers in the embodied form have significant positive effect in the eastern and central regions, relatively weaker for the former. While technology import in the disembodied form affect the western region significantly.According to the conclusions, four suggestions are put forward for reference:(1) Our country should improve the use efficiency of R&D investment.(2) The eastern region can take a path of independent research and development gradually.(3) The central region should optimizie trade structure and undertake eastern industry to the central transfer platform in order to absorb more embodied R&D spillovers.(4) The western region should improve its innovation ability, choosing a relatively straightforward, short-term way to accomplish technology-pursuingat the same time.