The Impact of Science and Technology Finance on Regional Collaborative Innovation: The Threshold Effect of Absorptive Capacity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is devoted to an extremely important problem that affects the economics of the objects under study. It can be seen from the material that the authors have a good command of the problem, make good use of mathematical tools and have attempted to show the results of state and market financing in science and technology.

The authors quite rightly note that regional scientific and technological innovations have a spill-over effect and stimulate regional innovations and in turn become the most important channel for economic growth. In the empirical part of the study, the authors show the method of calculation of joint regional innovations in three regions. The study builds a dynamic threshold model with an absorptive capacity based on threshold variables, which helps to identify the relationship between scientific and technological financing and regional co-investments. In addition, the study shows the degree of the synergy of technological innovation in the three regions under study.

Of particular interest are studies of threshold effects based on bootstrap sampling. This allowed us to determine the assessment of the impact of public funding of science and technology on regional co-investments, as well as market science and technology funding. The authors rightly conclude that the elements of absorptive capacity are measured based on matching supply and demand at the technological level and the basis of economic development. In this case, the regional absorptive capacity is taken as a threshold variable and on this basis, the impact of science and technology financing on regional collaborative innovation is shown.

However, there is an impression of a confusing construction of the material, which in general highlighted some errors. The material does not show why three Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions were chosen, because these regions are different in terms of potential, resources, and financing of scientific and technological progress. It should be shown why these regions were included in the research component. There are also technical errors (numbering of tables is broken), etc. Surprisingly, the article does not contain the goals, objectives, and methodology by which the study was conducted.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer and Editor,

Thank you for reviewing this paper. We are grateful to the editor and reviewer for their useful comments and suggestions, which have helped us improve the paper. We hope that this manuscript meets the editor’s and reviewer’ requirements. According to the comments, we made major changes to the paper and resubmitted the paper. The details are as follows：

Point 1: Abstract:It's better to add a more explicit research aim, the proportion of background at the beginning of the abstract can be further reduced.

However, there is an impression of a confusing construction of the material, which in general highlighted some errors. The material does not show why three Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions were chosen, because these regions are different in terms of potential, resources, and financing of scientific and technological progress. It should be shown why these regions were included in the research component. There are also technical errors (numbering of tables is broken), etc. Surprisingly, the article does not contain the goals, objectives, and methodology by which the study was conducted.

Response 1: Thank you for the comment. As reviewer pointed out that, we have added the reasons for taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and added the research objectives and methods. The details are as follows:

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region plays an important role in the region coordinated development, especially in reorganizing the function of Beijing as the capital. However, compared with other region coordinated development, Hebei may not be able to undertake and transform the innovation resources of Beijing and Tianjin well, so the strength gap between Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei is large, including the link of R&D input, innovation absorption, and innovation output transformation.

However, does the effect of S & T finance on regional S & T collaborative innovation vary according to the intensity of regional absorptive capacity? This is a question worth thinking about. Therefore, we introduce the intensity of regional absorptive capacity as a threshold variable into the nonlinear model of S & T finance and regional collaborative innovation to verify their nonlinear threshold characteristics. The research findings of threshold model reveal that different types of S & T finance have obvious differences in the role of regional S & T innovation. The research findings provide guidance for the allocation of S & T financial resources and improving the efficiency of scientific and technological innovation. Additionally, there are important theoretical and practical significance for further promoting the high quality development driven by innovation.

Finally, we have checked the forms in the paper and renumbered.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

This paper deals with an important topic. it examines  the impact of public and market science and technology finance on regional collaborative innovation using threshold panel data. overall, the paper is clear, good written, however the authors should take into account the following remarks in order to further enhance the quality of the paper.

- first the title should not include abbreviations, please replace "sci-tech finance" by Science and Technology Finance.

- the introduction does clearly show the value added and the novelty of the study, the authors need to clearly state what is the research gap and how is the study novel. also, the introduction should contain a description of the paper design in a final paragraph.

- the literature review should serve as a framework to draw the study hypotheses. therefore the authors need to add a sub-section in which they should describe the hypotheses of the study.

- the empirical methodology is quiet surprising. the authors need to reorganize the empirical model, i.e. the  PSTR model. first, when estimating a panel smooth transition model, there is a must to conduct the linearity test in order to justify the existence of a non linear relationship. Second this test allow to know whether there is one threshold or more than one. please refer  to these articles and include them as references to better present the PSTR model: 

W.Ghardallou, N. Alessa (2022). Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Performance in GCC Countries: A Panel Smooth Transition Regression Model. Sustainability, 14(13): 7908.

W. Ghardallou, (2022). Financial System Development and Democracy: a Panel Smooth Transition Regression Model Approach for Developing Countries. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 13(2), PP. 1-22.

also refer to these articles to better interpret the results of estimations. indeed, in addition to the coefficient t, the threshold value, the slope of the transition function should be interpreted.

- Finally the conclusion should include further policy implications regarding on how governments can benefit from the study results.  

  

 Good luck in your revision 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer and Editor,

Thank you for reviewing this paper. We are grateful to the editor and reviewer for their useful comments and suggestions, which have helped us improve the paper. We hope that this manuscript meets the editor’s and reviewer’ requirements. According to the comments, we made changes to the paper and resubmitted the paper. The details see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf