Indigenous R&D Effectiveness and Technology Transfer on Productivity Growth: Evidence from the Hi-Tech Industry of China

The study employs the panel data of 15 hi-tech industries over the period of 2000-2010 in order to examine the effectiveness of R&D with respect to productivity change and indentify the significant contributing factors with intensity in the Chinese hi-tech sector. The Malmquist Productivity Indexes are calculated by using the non-parametric programming technique and censored regression model is applied to conduct the empirical investigation. We find that on average, the sector is confronting productivity deterioration which is mainly due to the technical inefficiency. The Office Equipments industry has the highest productivity gain in our sample at the rate of, on average, 3.7% per year and all of which is caused by technical change. Furthermore, the electronic components industry is found to be the most efficient industry in the sector that drives an industry to have productivity progress on average, of 1.7% per year over the study period. At last, Tobit results indicate that spillovers through FDI and technology import are having significant and positive effect on the productivity progress.