Policy Disparities in Talent Attraction, Mobility of Innovation Factors, and Inter-regional Technological Complementarity

Mitigating the misallocation of innovation factors and technological resources induced by policy disparities in talent attraction is conducive to fostering inter-regional technological complementarity and facilitating the development of a unified national market. This paper constructs an indicator measuring policy disparities in talent attraction using textual data from local government work reports, and develops an index of intercity technological complementarity based on the IncoPat Global Patent Database. It investigates the causal effect and underlying mechanisms of policy disparities in talent attraction on intercity technological complementarity. The empirical results reveal that policy disparities in talent attraction significantly reduce the degree of inter-city technological complementarity. Such an effect is more pronounced for city pairs with shorter cultural and geographic distances but longer economic distances. The mechanism tests suggest that policy disparities in talent attraction undermine inter-city technological complementarity by restraining cross-city knowledge mobility, collaborative innovation, and technology transfer. Further analysis indicates that the decline in inter-city technological complementarity stemming from policy disparities in talent attraction impedes cross-city capital mobility and cross-regional supply chain deployment. Moreover, gaps in inter-city income distribution, factor market development, and intellectual property rights protection amplify the adverse effect of policy disparities in talent attraction on inter-city technological complementarity. This study concludes that divergent talent attraction policies trigger technological rivalry rather than technological complementarity, thereby undermining the allocation efficiency of innovation factors and technological resources.