The faster the better? Economic effects of the speed of inter‐city technology transfer in China

Abstract

Although existing studies questioned the simple positive correlation between the technology transfer speed and the benefits, they have been widely condemned for lacking em-pirical evidence. Using the patent transfer data at the city scale in China, and distinguishing fast from slow by divid-ing technology transfer speed into four levels, this paper attempts to answer the question in terms of city economic growth, which is whether the faster is the better. Panel re-gression results show that for economic growth of city, the speed of technology transfer does not mean that faster is better. In other words, technology transfer maintaining a relatively rapid speed (more than 1 year and less than 2 years) can promote city economic growth, although the evidence is weak.