Effects of Local Government Behavior on University–Enterprise Knowledge Flow: Evidence from China

Government financial investment has been increasingly adopted as a policy support to stimulate university–enterprise cooperation, however, empirical research from the perspective of knowledge flow remains limited. We reason that school–enterprise knowledge flow can be divided into dual stages, namely, knowledge creation and knowledge transfer, and this dual efficiency can be measured with the super-efficiency DEA model. The results show that the average value of knowledge creation efficiency (KCE) is higher than knowledge transfer efficiency (KTE). We adopt the Dynamic Generalized Spatial Model method to study the effect of government support on knowledge flow dual efficiency, and the regression results show that government support has a nonlinear effect on KCE while having a positive impact on KTE. We find that intergovernmental competition has a moderating influence on the relationship between government support and dual efficiency. Fiscal transparency can enhance the moderating effect of intergovernmental competition.