Effects of Social Capital on Technology Innovation: Evidence from China

摘要

This exploratory study investigates how social capital influence chinese technology innovative activity measured by patent applications,patent warrants and exchange in technology market.Education,R&D policy and institutions are also included in the analysis as factors of technology innovative activity.The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that for measuring social capital, instead of one overall index, two directors are introduced. Unlike many previous studies,this one uses the simultaneous equation modelling approach instead of single equation analysis in order to take into account the relationships between the factors of innovative activity.The findings provide strong support for the argument that social capital indeed influences technology innovative activity and furthermore,that different dimensions of social capital have dissimilar effects on innovative activity.