How can innovation network structure empower regional resilience?
Topics:
Keywords: Regional resilience, network structure, innovation, evolutionary economic geography
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Authors:
Yijia Wen,
Li Fang,
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Abstract
Innovation thrives the regional economy by inventing new businesses, promoting employment, and improving productivity. However, what network structures of innovation (e.g., centralized or decentralized) can make regions more resilient is understudied. Understanding how different network structure heterogeneously effects regional resilience is a prerequisite for optimizing resources’ distribution. We take on these tasks and answer the following research question: what innovation network structure contributes to regional resilience in terms of weakening external shock (i.e., resistance), recovering to pre-shock equilibrium (i.e., recovery), and developing new growth path (i.e., renewal), respectively?
We use patent data from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to construct the innovation-generation network in all the MSAs in the U.S. We use four kinds of natural hazards (i.e., flooding, hurricane, earthquake, and tsunami) as exogenous shocks to examine a region’s economic resilience. Meanwhile, we collect employment data to construct indicators for regional resilience.
We adopt social network analysis (SNA) to quantify the innovation network structures in each MSA. So far, we have cleaned all the co-patenting, natural hazards, and employment data and calculated the network structure indicators over time. Next step, we will use the two-way fixed effect difference-in-difference model to examine the influence of network structure on different kinds of economic resilience.
The study contributes to economic resilience literature by deepening the understanding of utilizing specific network structural advantages to empower different aspects of resilience. Practically, this study could guide planners to target stimulus packages to optimize innovation network structures and improve overall economic resilience.
How can innovation network structure empower regional resilience?
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
