Human mobility restrictions and innovation: evidence from China

ABSTRACT Population mobility plays an essential role in the diffusion of knowledge. To the best of our knowledge, the existing literature focuses on the migration of workers between regions. Still, we employ a temporary policy of human mobility restriction in China to estimate the effect of COVID-19 on innovation. We find that the number of application invention patents decreases remarkably 1.813 using RD design and remains declined even if we rule out the Spring Festival and the viral effects using RD-DID. Moreover, the mechanism research suggests that the lockdown causes a decline in the population mobility within Wuhan city and inflow from other cities and we rule out the mechanism that skilled labours flow out Wuhan. In addition, we further find that institutional innovations have a significant reduction, especially invention patents in universities. This study highlights the enormous negative impact of human mobility restrictions on innovation due to COVID-19.