Creative China? The University, Tolerance and Talent in Chinese Regional Development

Richard Florida, Charlotta Mellander and Haifeng Qian ()
Additional contact information
Richard Florida: Martin Prosperity Institute
Haifeng Qian: School of Public Policy, George Mason University

No 145, Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation from Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies

Abstract: The relationships between talent, technology and regional development have been widely examined in the advanced economies. While there is a general consensus as to the important role talent plays in regional development, debate has emerged on two key issues. The first involves the efficacy of educational (i.e. human capital) versus occupational (i.e. the creative class) measures of talent; the second involves the factors affecting the distribution of talent. In this study, we have used structural equation models and path analysis. We employed both educational and occupational measures of talent to examine the relationships between talent, technology and regional economic performance in China, and to isolate the effects of tolerance, differing levels of consumer service amenities, and the location of universities on the distribution of talent. Contrary to the findings of empirical studies on the developed economies, we found the relationships between the distribution of talent and technology and between the distribution of talent and regional economic performance in China to be weak. We found the presence of universities – a factor highly influenced by government policy – and the actual stock of talent to be strongly related. We also found that tolerance, as measured by the “Hukou index,” plays an important role in the distribution of talent and technology in China.

Keywords: China; Talent; Human Capital; Creative Class; Tolerance; Technology; Regional Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 P30 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2008-10-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-cul, nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-geo, nep-hrm and nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://static.sys.kth.se/itm/wp/cesis/cesiswp145.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0145

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation from Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vardan Hovsepyan ().