How the nature of technologies influences their cross-city inflows: empirical evidence from China, 2001–2020

Drawing on over 10 million patent applications, this study examines factors influencing technology inflows from the perspective of technological nature. We find an inverted-U relationship between technology inflows and relative complexity, suggesting cities favour technologies that match their own complexity levels. Additionally, both a technology’s structural hole and its relatedness to the city’s technological base positively affect inflows. Instrumental variable analysis confirms the causal impact of structural holes, and robustness checks validate these findings. Heterogeneity analyses reveal a compensatory effect between relatedness density and structural holes, and a threshold effect of relative complexity on the role of relatedness density.