Research On The Influence Of Industrial Agglomeration On Urban Innovation Capacity

In the context of the new normal of economic development,the innovation capacity of a city reflects the competitiveness and vitality of a city’s development,and is increasingly valued in the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy.In the process of regional economic integration,industries form agglomerative development within the administrative scope of a city,and one of the positive externalities brought to this city is the improvement of innovation capacity.In this paper,we take the Yangtze River Economic Belt as an example to study the urban innovation effects of single agglomeration and synergistic agglomeration of two industries,manufacturing and production services,respectively.This is an important guideline for how to improve urban innovation in the Yangtze River Economic Belt,and also has some implications for the innovation development in other regions of China.In this paper,through the combing of relevant domestic and foreign literature and the analysis of relevant theories,we find that there are two mechanisms of the influence of industrial agglomeration on urban innovation capacity.On the one hand,industrial agglomeration may have a certain inhibitory effect on urban innovation capacity due to the crowding effect,false agglomeration effect and innovation dilemma.On the other hand,the agglomeration of individual industries can have positive effects on urban innovation capacity through knowledge and technology spillover effects,competition and cooperation effects,and network and learning effects.The synergistic agglomeration of industries can enhance the innovation capability of cities through labor matching mechanism,upstream and downstream industrial chain synergistic division of labor mechanism,etc.In the empirical study section,this paper uses balanced panel data of 108 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt region from 2003 to 2019 for the analysis,which mainly includes the following components.(1)Firstly,regression analysis using individual and time bi-directional fixed effects models reveals that manufacturing agglomeration in cities of the Yangtze River Economic Zone has a significant positive effect on urban innovation capacity.In contrast,the agglomeration of production service industries significantly inhibits the improvement of urban innovation capability.The synergistic agglomeration of two industries can significantly promote the innovation capability of cities,and the magnitude of its positive effect is larger than the innovation effect of the agglomeration of single industry in manufacturing.And the robustness of the results of the two-way fixed effects model was tested by both excluding the special sample and replacing the explanatory variables.(2)In the heterogeneity analysis,this paper first divides the Yangtze River economic belt into downstream and middle and upper reaches for sub-regional heterogeneity analysis.The results show that manufacturing agglomeration in both the middle and upper reaches has a significant positive effect on the innovation capacity of cities,and its effect size is larger in the lower reaches than in the middle and upper reaches.In terms of productive service agglomeration,the middle and upper reaches have a significant effect of inhibiting innovation,while the lower reaches have a certain effect of promoting innovation,but the promotion effect is not obvious.Both upstream and downstream industries have positive effects on the innovation capacity of cities,but the positive effect of downstream is not significant and smaller than that of upstream.It indicates that in order to achieve innovation development in the process of industrial structure upgrading,the middle and upper reaches should improve the quality of productive service industry clustering,and the lower reaches should pay more attention to the synergistic clustering development of the two industries.In addition,this paper also analyzes the heterogeneity of patent types into invention patents,utility models and design patents,and finds that the agglomeration of productive service industries has an insignificant positive effect on the output of invention patents and a significant inhibitory effect on the output of utility models and design patents.Manufacturing agglomeration and industrial synergy agglomeration have a significant promotion effect on both types of patent output.(3)This paper uses a dynamic panel system GMM model in dealing with the endogeneity problem.This is done by adding two-period lagged values of urban innovation capacity to the model to test the dynamic relationship between industrial agglomeration and urban innovation capacity.The results show that the regression coefficients of both the one-period lag and two-period lag of urban innovation capability are positive,indicating that urban innovation has a self-reinforcing mechanism.Manufacturing agglomeration and two-industry synergistic agglomeration have positive urban innovation effects,while production service agglomeration has a significantly negative effect on urban innovation capacity,which is consistent with the empirical results of the benchmark regression model.Further,the production service industry is divided into high-end production service industry and low-end production service industry,and the innovation effects of these two types of production service industry agglomeration and their synergistic agglomeration with manufacturing industry are analyzed.The results show that both types of production service agglomeration in the Yangtze River Economic Zone have different degrees of inhibiting effects on the innovation capacity of cities,with the negative effect of low-end production service agglomeration being greater.In terms of synergistic agglomeration with manufacturing industries,high-end productive service industries have a significant innovation-promoting effect,while low-end productive service industries show a significant inhibition.Therefore,the Yangtze River Economic Zone region should strengthen the synergistic development of high-end productive service industry and manufacturing industry,and focus on the high-quality synergistic development of low-end productive service industry and manufacturing industry when promoting the synergistic development of industrial agglomeration.(4)Finally,a panel threshold model is constructed with the level of informationization of the city as the threshold variable,and it is found that the promotion effect of both single industry agglomeration and industry synergistic agglomeration on the innovation capability of the city is limited by the level of informationization of the city.Only when the informatization level of the city exceeds the threshold value,the improvement of single industry agglomeration or industry synergistic agglomeration can play a positive role in promoting the innovation ability of the city.Based on the findings of the empirical analysis and combined with the development characteristics of industrial agglomeration and urban innovation capacity in the Yangtze River Economic Zone,this paper proposes corresponding policy recommendations in order to better utilize the innovation effect of industrial agglomeration and realize the synergy of industrial development and urban innovation.