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Keywords

comprehensive innovation reform experiment; innovation output; policy effect assessment; syntheticcontrol method

Abstract

The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the overall programme on systematically promoting comprehensive innovation and reform experiments in selected regions, selecting a total of eight areas, including Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, Shanghai, Anhui province, Sichuan province, Guangdong province, Wuhan, Shenyang, and Xi��an, as the pilot regions for comprehensive innovation and reform. The program is a new initiative to promote scientific and technological innovation and institutional mechanism reform and accelerate the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy. Then, assessing the policy effect of the comprehensive innovation reform experiment on the innovation output of the experimental regions is of great significance for the promotion and optimization of the comprehensive innovation reform experiment policy and the promotion of regional innovation development. This study empirically analyses the innovation output effect of Guangdong, Anhui, and Sichuan pilot comprehensive innovation reform zones based on the panel data of 24 provinces in China from 2005 to 2021 using the synthetic control method, and the number of invention patent applications authorized is used as a proxy variable for innovation output in this study. This study empirically analyses the innovation output effects of the pilot comprehensive innovation reform areas in Guangdong, Anhui, and Sichuan based on the panel data of 24 provinces across China from 2005 to 2021, using the synthetic control method.The study results show that, firstly, the comprehensive innovation reform pilot zones in Guangdong, Anhui, and Sichuan provinces have significantly promoted the innovation output of the provinces in the pilot zones. As shown by the synthetic control results, establishing comprehensive innovation and reform pilot zones in Guangdong and Anhui can significantly promote their innovation output, but not for Sichuan. Secondly, the comprehensive innovation reform pilot policy releases nearly 50 000 and 10 000 pieces of growth in the highest year of the proxy variable invention patent application authorization for Guangdong and Anhui innovation output, respectively. Guangdong province is obvious year by year with the advancement of the comprehensive innovation reform experiment policy, while Anhui province has shown the promotion effect at the beginning of the policy implementation. Thirdly, further analysis reveals that the regional variability of the policy effect in the pilot areas of comprehensive innovation reform occurs due to the environment and industrial structure of science and technology innovation, the focus of the policy, the uneven distribution of science and technology innovation resources, and the implementation power of the local government. The findings of this paper provide some theoretical support in verifying the policy effects of the pilot zones of comprehensive innovation reform, revealing the space and dynamic changes of innovation output growth, and exploring the regional variability of policy effects. Accordingly, the following policy recommendations are made.First, strengthen regional differences, with a focus on optimizing implementation strategies in regions where policy effects are not evident. Second, stimulate policy vitality: give full play to the leading and competing effects of regions with outstanding implementation. Third, to give full play to autonomous capacity: to improve the level of multi-principal and multi-link autonomous innovation in the pilot regions.

DOI

10. 16315/j. stm. 2025. 01. 005

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