Spatial Clustering of Top Talent and Innovation Development in Latecomer Countries:Evidence from Individual Patent Data in China
Innovation is the primary engine of development,with talent being the most critical resource for innovation activities.For latecomer countries with insufficient innovation talent endowments,clustering top innovation talent in key industries is a crucial strategy to achieve innovation catch-up.However,existing literature often overlooks disparities in innovation resources due to different stages of national development and lacks focus on the role of top innovation talent.This underscores the necessity of exploring how latecomer countries can leverage the clustering of top innovation talent to achieve innovation catch-up.This paper extends traditional economic theories of agglomeration by considering different stages of national innova-tion development.Using individual patent data from nine strategic emerging industries in China from 2001 to 2019,it analyzes the impacts and mechanisms of top talent clustering on individual innovation output from a micro perspective.The findings demonstrate that the clustering of top innovation talent in cities significantly enhances both the quantity and quality of individual innovation.To address potential endogeneity issues,this paper employs an instrumental variable(Ⅳ)approach,using the restructuring of Chinese higher education institutions in 1952 to construct an instrument for city-industry talent clustering.The Ⅳ regression results confirm that increased top innovation talent clustering positively influ-ences individual invention output.Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impact of top innovation talent clustering on in-dividual innovation is more pronounced when inventors have higher abilities,work in smaller teams,and are affiliated with enterprises.This paper identifies four crucial mechanisms through which top innovation talent clustering enhances individual in-novation output.First,talent clustering improves individual innovation by establishing stronger local knowledge net-works.Second,talent clustering boosts individual innovation output through collaborative knowledge spillovers.Third,talent clustering concentrates on international knowledge frontiers and fosters tighter global knowledge networks,ulti-mately enhancing individual innovation output.Fourth,market-based clustering of top innovation talent leads to more sig-nificant improvements in individual innovation output.To further assess the macro-level impacts of the spatial distribution of top innovation talent,this paper constructs a counterfactual analysis framework.The results suggest that a uniform distribution of top talent across cities would raise the innovation output in less clustered regions but would not compensate for the decline in highly clustered areas,ulti-mately reducing the nation's total innovation output.Conversely,top talent aggregation in key industrial cities signifi-cantly boosts national innovation output.This paper makes three key contributions.First,unlike previous studies that focused on specific industries or firms,it provides a micro-level analysis of top innovation talent in latecomer countries.Second,it integrates the experience of latecomer countries into the micro-foundations of innovation clustering,analyzing the underlying mechanisms from the perspective of latecomers rather than developed countries.Third,by constructing a counterfactual analysis framework,it links the micro-level impacts of individual innovation clustering with national innovation output,offering valuable in-sights into optimizing strategic innovation industries and talent policies in latecomer countries.The findings of this paper have important policy implications.For latecomer countries,encouraging the clustering of top innovation talent and fully leveraging limited talent resources are crucial to overcoming the disadvantages of limited endowments commonly faced by latecomer countries and achieving innovation catch-up.Creating an attractive environ-ment for top talent,fully utilizing market mechanisms,building collaborative platforms,and adopting an open and inclu-sive attitude towards global talent recruitment are essential during the clustering process.
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