Does Technology Flow Matter for Regional Technological Specialization? Evidence from China

Based on patent database of the China State Intellectual Property Office, the study analyzes 75,458 transfer data of patent application rights and patent rights and 238,807 non-public data of patent citations, which are used as proxy variables of technology flow of market-based and non-market-based, respectively, among 30 provinces in China from 2009 to 2015. Random effect models of panel data results indicate that there are regional differences in the impact of technology flow on technological specialization. Under the conditions of market-based (rent spillovers), the technological specialization of regions with high technology knowledge stock are more positively affected by technology flow, but regions with low technology knowledge stock are not. While under the conditions of non-market-based (pure knowledge spillovers), there are not significant for both types of regions. Based on the findings of this study, policy implications are discussed. Introduction Technological specialization refers to those technologies with relative advantages which is numbers and position distribution of in all technology classifications or technology fields [1,2]. To a certain extent, technological specialization reflects the knowledge creation ability, competence or core competitive advantage in a specific technological field of a country, region or firm [2-6]. Hence, the research on the realization mechanism and innovative function of it has been continuously concerned by scholars of strategic management and technological innovation [4,5,7,8]. There are three important perspectives on the study of the influencing factors of technological specialization. First, research from the perspective of market demand and intermediate service support [2,9,10]. Second, research from the perspective of macro environment, such as national innovation system and comparative institutional advantages of a country, etc.[5,8,11]. Third, research from the perspective of the micro carrier role [3,5,12]. Though the effect of technological specialization on countries’ technological profile and firms’ innovation has recently been highlighted in the extant literature, the empirical research on the factors that affect technological specialization at regional level are still limited. This study fills the voids by developing a new important perspective on above by using the statistical data of the transfer of patent application rights and the transfer of patent rights from China State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO). We focus on the effect of technology flow on technological specialization at the regional level. There are three reasons for this. First, in the context of globalization, most of the interaction of innovative activities occurs at the regional level within a country [13,14], especially typical for China. Second, with the facilitation of transportation and information technology, the free mobility of technology resources is increasingly strengthened, which might, to some extent, affect regional technological specialization. Third, the technological specialization may lead to the formation of regional division of innovative labor [15], which means a region might focus on its comparative advantage fields of technology, but purchases peripheral technologies from specialized market in other regions. The results will benefit all parties, promote the effective use of resources and increase the overall social welfare of the society [16,17]. 209 Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 2018 5th International Conference on Management Science and Management Innovation (MSMI 2018) Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research (AEBMR), volume 54